Al Jazeera TV Selects Irdeto for Sports Content Protection

Popular Network Extends Relationship with Irdeto to Protect Premium Programming Across Middle East and North Africa

• Press Release
• Source: Irdeto
• On 2:00 am EDT, Friday September 11, 2009

AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Irdeto, a leading expert in content and business model protection solutions and services, today announced an expanded relationship with Al Jazeera Sport, part of the Al Jazeera Network and a leading provider of sports TV services in the Middle East and North Africa. Irdeto will now protect Al Jazeera Sport’s premium content across its entire digital TV network and as part of the agreement, will source more than 500,000 Irdeto Smart Cards.

The expanded agreement between Al Jazeera Sport and Irdeto aligns with an aggressive, industry-wide drive in the Gulf to protect content and curb prolific sales of illegal TV set-top boxes that decrypt pay-TV channels. The Irdeto solution provides Al Jazeera Sport with a versatile, modular and scalable Conditional Access System (CAS) featuring the highest levels of protection available against the theft of content over their networks — including pay-per-view (PPV) and video on demand (VOD).

"Irdeto and Al Jazeera Sport have been successfully partnering in the Middle East for more than three years,” stated David Canellos, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Irdeto. “We are very pleased to expand on this strong partnership and look forward to continuing to support the success of Al Jazeera Sport as a leading pay-tv operator in the region.”

Serving more than two million subscribers in the region, Al Jazeera Sport has an existing relationship with Irdeto for the encryption of its Nilesat satellite transmissions through the company’s pedigreed CAS. The agreement will expand Irdeto's encryption services to two other satellites (Hotbird and Arabsat) so that content is protected for any subscriber accessing Al Jazeera Sport via any of the three satellites.

Please visit Irdeto during IBC 2009 in Amsterdam from September 11-15, Hall 1, #D51 to view live demonstrations and to meet with an Irdeto representative.

About Irdeto

Irdeto empowers companies to protect and monetize their digital assets and maximize return on content with innovative and reliable software technologies, content management and distribution solutions and end-to-end solutions and services. The company’s products include conditional access, digital rights management, business support systems and set-top box software solutions. Through group company Cloakware, it provides software and datacenter security solutions, More than 500 customers worldwide trust Irdeto to secure and enable the delivery of their valuable content across digital broadcast, IP, mobile, enterprise and government networks. Irdeto solutions currently enable simple to advanced business models on more than one billion devices and applications.

Founded in 1969, Irdeto employs over 900 people in 25 offices across the globe, including the dual corporate headquarters in Amsterdam and Beijing. The company is a subsidiary of multinational media group Naspers (JSE: NPN), which includes a wide range of pay TV, Internet, instant-messaging, technology and publishing businesses. For more information, please visit www.irdeto.com.

Irdeto
Susan Brown, +31 023 556 2218
Corporate Communications Manager
sbrown@irdeto.com
or
Racepoint Group
Sandy George, +1-617-413-6126
sgeorge@racepointgroup.com