DVBCN Digital Television Chinese Network (Reporter: Meng Lai): On August 22, the 21st Beijing International Radio, Film and Television Equipment Exhibition (referred to as BIRTV2012) was held at the Beijing International Exhibition Center. In the National Radio and Television Administration's Technology Innovation Exhibition Area in Hall 7, the Administration showcased downloadable CAS for the first time as part of its 2012 technological innovation achievements. Eight CAS companies from China and overseas exhibited downloadable CAS servers and JAVA middleware virtual machine solutions for the first time.
Staff from Taixin Company in Jinan, Shandong, introduced to DVBCN reporters the demonstration environment and the advantages of downloadable CAS: Various CAS companies can download their respective CA software to set-top boxes through the front end, allowing for online CA replacement without the need to change terminals. This completely eliminates the binding of CA to the set-top box, achieving an ideal state where the set-top box hardware is independent of the CA.
On March 16, 2012, the National Standardization Technical Committee for Radio, Film, and Television (referred to as the Broadcasting Standardization Committee) officially issued the industry standard GY/T225-2012 "Technical Specifications for Downloadable Conditional Access Systems," abbreviated in English as Downloadable Conditional Access System, hence the abbreviation for downloadable CAS is DCAS.
At the second meeting of the Technical Committee of the Broadcasting and Television Friendly Network Alliance on March 19, 2012, Xie Wei, the director of the Television Technology Research Institute of the State Administration of Radio and Television, introduced DCAS to technical representatives from cable network companies in 25 provinces.
On April 5th, the website of the Secretariat of the National Standardization Technical Committee for Radio, Film, and Television, under the General Administration of Radio and Television, officially provided the document download for GY/T225-2012 "Technical Specifications for Downloadable Conditional Access Systems." At the same time, the JAVA interface for downloadable CA was also announced.
So far, domestic companies such as Shandong Taixin, Beijing Digital Taihe, Shanghai Tianbai, Wuhan Tianyu, Yongxin Shibo, and Shumashixun, as well as foreign companies like NDS from the UK (acquired by Cisco) and Nagravision from Switzerland, have each launched DCAS servers based on this technical specification and Java interface. These eight companies have achieved system verification for downloadable CAS on the Java Virtual Machine under the organization of the State Administration of Radio and Television's Institute of Broadcasting Science. They are also showcased in the 2012 Technology Innovation Exhibition area of BIRTV organized by the State Administration of Radio and Television.
Regarding the standards for broadcasting CAS, the Broadcasting Standardization Committee has issued three CAS technical specifications to date. The first technical specification, released in 2001, is GY/Z 175-2001 "Technical Specification for Digital Television Broadcasting Conditional Access System," commonly known as the card-based CAS technical specification. This standard was in use for 12 years until 2012. During this period, companies such as Beijing Yongxin Vision, Beijing Digital Video, and Shanghai Tianbai emerged as publicly listed companies primarily focused on CAS. As of August 2012, there were still 21 CA companies certified by the State Administration of Radio and Television. Over these 12 years, the issuance of CA cards in the Chinese market has been calculated in the hundreds of millions.
However, with the development of various television technologies such as cable, terrestrial, satellite, mobile, IPTV, and OTT, the traditional DVB-CAM card CAS has gradually failed to meet the needs of operators. Therefore, in 2008, the National Radio and Television Standardization Committee issued the CA technical specifications for mobile phones, specifically regulating the CAS specifications for Micro SD cards. Today, with the EOC two-way network transformation, the integration of provincial networks, and the promotion of triple-play services, the Radio and Television Standardization Committee has introduced a new generation of CA standards - DCAS, designed to meet the compatibility requirements of operators' CAS across different hardware platforms, allowing terminals to be hardware-independent and truly achieving the separation of software and hardware.
According to a user on the DVBCN forum who has read the GY/Z 225-2012 DCAS standard: Although DCAS is merely a technical specification, it has already surpassed the traditional CAS framework. It has diversified terminal capabilities, allowing operators' terminals to extend beyond set-top boxes and televisions. Thanks to the presence of the JAVA virtual machine, it also provides manageable and controllable solutions for multimedia gateways, tablets, and mobile phones through CAS. Operators can choose between card-based CAS and card-free CAS, as well as select which CAS company provides the server, offering a seamless linking tool for the integration of DVB and OTT services.