Well actually with modern segmented streaming (HLS or DASH), you only need 2 encodes to get 2^n (for video of n segments) unique streams. The trick is you gene

Well actually with modern segmented streaming (HLS or DASH), you only need 2 encodes to get 2^n (for video of n segments) unique streams. The trick is you generate the manifest per user, and they each get a unique permutation. I actually spoke to a vendor in the last month that claims to have actually deployed this and actually prosecuted pirates. Obviously this is a sales engineer pitching a product, so take it with a grain of salt, but I have no reason to believe the technology is not reasonably robust and scalable.