The HbbTV Association has announced what it describes as a significant addition to its DASH DRM Reference Application.
It includes Multiperiod DASH (from server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI)) and PlayReady SL3000, which being employed by US content providers.
The HbbTV Association introduced the HbbTV DASH DRM Reference Application in 2017, after recognising that DRM and DASH playback raised interoperability issues which were not covered fully in the HbbTV Test Suite.
The HbbTV DASH DRM Reference Application offers PlayReady, Marlin and ClearKey protected test content, Live DASH content created with LiveSim from DASH-IF, multi-track audio streams, important elements for low-latency DASH, two alternatives for support of subtitles, MPD events, and much more, all in different resolutions and frame rates, up to 4K.
Among the most recent additions are multiperiod DASH tests with both live and VoD content. Its development has been closely tied to the ongoing development of the open-source video player library developed by DASH-IF, dash.js. Multiperiod DASH content covers a variety of use-cases of Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) and offers alongside a simple example also more difficult scenarios complete with subtitles, multiple ad breaks, multi-track audio switching and timeline gaps in component streams, said the Association.
It has also added enhanced content security tests in the form of Microsoft PlayReady Security Level 3000. This content, along with multiperiod DASH content, is now freely available for device and end-user testing at https://refapp.hbbtv.org.
The HbbTV DASH DRM Reference Application is available for broadcasters, TV set manufacturers, and national testing regimes for testing TV sets and content regarding their support of different DASH video streams and DRM encryption decoding.
