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It's all OAuth and SAML on the backend. The player asks for authorization to play content from the cable company (since it has to check against a few dozen crit

It's all OAuth and SAML on the backend. The player asks for authorization to play content from the cable company (since it has to check against a few dozen criteria like entitlements, parental controls, concurrent stream limits, etc.) and is either given authorization or an error. It's honestly pretty simple.

majormajor 9y ago
That still seems incomplete. How does e.g. the cable company know when I stop watching a piece of content through the ESPN app in this scenario, and so have that stream available for [other person on my account] to watch through the TBS app? E.g., still seems like you have to have a central heartbeat if you're centralizing your stream limits. And more directly, why can my parents watch more stuff if using multiple separate apps on their shared cable account than if they're both watching through their UVerse app?
- exelius 9y ago
  You do need a central heartbeat; the cable company is the party that bills you for service, so they're the ones determining if you have access to the content. The content owners (i.e. TBS) send start/stop data to the cable company via their app, there's a timeout if the heartbeat is lost, plus the DRM keys expire pretty frequently (every few minutes I think, though it depends on what streaming service the content is hosted on) so if they're not renewed you can't keep playing the video. Add a little logic to this flow and you can see how it works. Not every app implements this properly, but it's all part of the decade-old spec. If this sounds like a lot of work, you're right -- the vast majority of content owners outsource all this work to Adobe's hosted TVE platform that maintains integrations with multiple cable companies. Edit: also, cable companies definitely collect and resell viewing data for advertising purposes. Shouldn't surprise anyone, but they've had this capability for at least 20 years (STB channel change used to be sent on out-of-band RF back then but it's all IP now). In fact, with nothing more than an IP address, you can usually target quite a few attributes at the household level.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Great info, thanks!
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    That’s not how it happens now, but that is how it could work, sure! Now the only thing that’s couple is the auth, once you are logged into XYZ app, the cable company isn’t consulted until the auth expires.

majormajor 9y ago

That still seems incomplete. How does e.g. the cable company know when I stop watching a piece of content through the ESPN app in this scenario, and so have that stream available for [other person on my account] to watch through the TBS app? E.g., still seems like you have to have a central heartbeat if you're centralizing your stream limits. And more directly, why can my parents watch more stuff if using multiple separate apps on their shared cable account than if they're both watching through their UVerse app?

exelius 9y ago
You do need a central heartbeat; the cable company is the party that bills you for service, so they're the ones determining if you have access to the content. The content owners (i.e. TBS) send start/stop data to the cable company via their app, there's a timeout if the heartbeat is lost, plus the DRM keys expire pretty frequently (every few minutes I think, though it depends on what streaming service the content is hosted on) so if they're not renewed you can't keep playing the video. Add a little logic to this flow and you can see how it works. Not every app implements this properly, but it's all part of the decade-old spec. If this sounds like a lot of work, you're right -- the vast majority of content owners outsource all this work to Adobe's hosted TVE platform that maintains integrations with multiple cable companies. Edit: also, cable companies definitely collect and resell viewing data for advertising purposes. Shouldn't surprise anyone, but they've had this capability for at least 20 years (STB channel change used to be sent on out-of-band RF back then but it's all IP now). In fact, with nothing more than an IP address, you can usually target quite a few attributes at the household level.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Great info, thanks!
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  That’s not how it happens now, but that is how it could work, sure! Now the only thing that’s couple is the auth, once you are logged into XYZ app, the cable company isn’t consulted until the auth expires.