Chili is an Italian premium video on demand service that has expanded to several European countries. It faces challenges in designing a scalable architecture to support multiple devices, delivering content through content delivery networks, and protecting content with digital rights management while offering various formats. Chili addresses these by using a microservices architecture, adaptive streaming technologies, a multi-CDN approach, and common encryption standards to manage digital rights across platforms.

1. Stefano Flamia – CoFounder & CTO
Apr 2016
Challenges for Premium
Video on Demand (VoD) services

2. CHILI AT A GLANCE
CHILI, founded in June 2012, rapidly became one of the most important OTT players in Italy
CHILI has a long standing and very close relationship with OEMs and Hollywood Studios, further strengthened after the recent market
development (beginning of 2015) where all partners supported CHILI expansion plans to launch the service in Poland, Austria, Germany and UK
CHILI remarkable achievements prove management quality, credibility and quick responsiveness, as well as outstanding technology and
platform flexibility
CHILI: Cinema on YOUR demand
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3. COMPANY DNA
Technologies developed for the B2C business contribute to generate B2B revenues. CHILI supplies platforms to clients thanks to its technical
expertise and cost effectiveness: flexible and tailor made solutions which support publishers, broadcasters and a wide range of media and
entertainment enterprises which want to operate and communicate through video streaming solutions.
Three business lines for a full valorization of contents and technology:
B2B
• VOD based on a transactional model (TVOD+EST)
• All current releases, the first available window
• Top level quality
• Available on every internet-connected device
B2C
CHILI leverages on a wide range of marketing
campaigns with key partners, boosting awareness and
reliability while increasing customer base and
revenues
MARKETING
CHILI, by adopting the Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD) model, strategically decided to differentiate from other players (broadcasters
and telcos) who mostly sell under a subscription agreement. Within this model, CHILI has the advantage to offer the most recent movies almost
two years before SVOD players (eg NETFLIX), asking only to pay for what you watch and being therefore complementary to subscription services
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4. CHILI since beginning focused in providing
state of the art features and experience
through all internet connected devices,
making available best video quality with full
HD format.
CHILI is among the few European Companies
that kept the promise to launch native UHD
movies with watermarking from Hollywood
CES 2014 - NATIVE UHD in Streaming IFA 2015 - Intelligent UHD Samsung
iUHD made through Samsung proprietary
software which enhances the colors,
brightness and general quality of movies.
The final output is a file in full HD (1080i)
more performing than a standard one.
2012 – Full HD & CEX
CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY
The most advanced stage in the development of content distribution through internet devices
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5. WHICH ARE OUR MAIN CHALLENGES?
 Design a scalable and flexible architecture to manage multiple heterogeneous devices
 Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and adaptive streaming solutions
 Content protection and Digital Rights Management (DRM) standards and the facto solutions
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6. ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
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Some constraints to be considered:
• Devices with different technologies (PC/MAC, SMART TVs, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Chromecast, Game Consolles, Android TV, …)
• Unmanaged devices (no version control, multiple QA, …)
• Devices with different performances and legacy constraints
• Service load mostly concentrated at peak hours (we like week-ends with bad wheather)
• Quick time to market for releasing new features

7. REST
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Representational State Transfer (REST) is a paradigm to design an architecture based on a set of principles that describe how networked resources
are defined and addressed.
An architecture is considered RESTful if:
 States and functionalities are divided into distributed resources
 Every resource is uniquely addressable using a uniform and minimal set of commands (typically using HTTP verbs)
 The protocol is client/server, stateless, layered, and supports caching
The architectural benefits of the REST paradigm are:
 Performance - component interactions can be the dominant factor in user-perceived performance and network efficiency
 Scalability to support large numbers of components and interactions among components
 Simplicity of interfaces
 Modifiability of components to meet changing needs (even while the application is running)
 Visibility of communication between components by service agents
 Portability of components by moving program code with the data
 Reliability is the resistance to failure at the system level in the presence of failures within components, connectors, or data

8. MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE
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Is a software architecture style in which complex applications are composed of small, independent processes communicating with each
other using language-agnostic APIs. These services are small building blocks, highly decoupled and focused on doing a small task,
facilitating a modular approach to system-building.
Main properties of a microservices architecture are:
 Services are easy to replaced
 Services are organized around capabilities (e.g. user interface front-end, recommendation, logistics, billing, etc.)
 Services can be implemented using different programming languages, databases, hardware and software environment, depending
on what fits best
 Architectures are symmetrical rather than hierarchical (producer - consumer)

9. CDNs AND ADAPTIVE STREAMING SOLUTIONS
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Constraints to be considered:
• We are running on unmanaged broadband networks
• Multiple devices supporting different technologies
• Big content libraries (10.000 contents per country, about 1PB of storage)
• Long tail contents fruition distribution (popular contents generate most of requests)

10. HTTP ADAPTIVE STREAMING 1/2
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 Generate multiple quality versions per content
 Chop quality versions into segments (encoding with 3 secs GOP)
 Provide a manifest which describes temporal relationship between segments
 Clients request manifest first and based on manifest info the individual segments

11. HTTP ADAPTIVE STREAMING 2/2
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The capability to deliver the best
streaming format to each screen
resolution and device
HD+ 1080i
(1920x1080)HD 720p
(1280x720)
SD
(720x576)
Bit Rate
High 800 kbps
Medium 1.200 kbps
Low 1.800 kbps
Bit Rate
High 4.000 kbps
Medium 3.000 kbps
Low 1.800 kbps
Bit Rate
High 6.500 kbps
Medium 4.500 kbps
Low 2.500 kbps
Means manage about
25 files per movie
(formats + DRMs)
UHD
(3840×2160)
HEVC
Bit Rate
High 18.000 kbps
Medium 12.000 kbps
Low 6.000 kbps

12. HTTP ADAPTIVE STREAMING TECHNOLOGIES
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 Microsoft Smooth Streaming (MSS)
 Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)
 Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)
 Widevine HTTP Dynamic Streaming
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP
ISO/IEC Standard 23009-1
Main Feature Smooth
Streaming
HLS HDS Widevine
Classic
MPEG-DASH
Deployment on Ordinary HTTP Servers X X X
Multiple Audio Channels (e.g., Languages,
Comments, etc.)
X X X
Flexible Content Protection with Common
Encryption (DRM)
X X
Closed Captions / Subtitles X X X X
HTML5 Support X
HEVC Ready (UHD/4K) X
Official International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC
MPEG)
X

13. CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK (CDN)
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High performing global distributed network made by
origin servers and edge nodes
Main Features:
 High availability
 High delivery performance
Two main topologies:
 Edges within ISP networks
 Edges located at IX (Internet Exchange)
Outcome from our experience:
 Multi CDN approach to balance performances and costs
 Measure final customers perceived quality (buffering) with best
granularity possible. Lot of actors involved, issues could be at: CDN,
Interconnection between CDN-ISP, ISP network, last mile, player, …)

14. CONTENT PROTECTION AND DRM
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Digital Right Management (DRM) for content protection
Main Components:
 Encryptor/Packager
 Key Manager/License server
 Client applications for content decription on devices
… Life is not easy
Multiple solutions means:
 Complexity for multiple integrations
 Content library duplication!!

15. COMMON ENCRYPTION (CENC)
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… a new standard, for?
 Abstracting encryption from DRMs … think about my big library
 Allow DRMs to share: – keys, key identifiers, encryption algorithm, parameters and signaling, location to store proprietary data
 Protection System Specific Header (PSSH ISOBMF box) – leaves DRM implementation to individual systems
 Prior to this standard: – different set of files required for each different DRM type – interchange of files between authorized
devices generally not possible because of different DRMs.

16. DASH CENC and EME for BROWSERS
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Browser
CDM 3
Media Content
DASH
CENC
JavaScript Application DRM 1
License
server
DRM 2
License
server
DRM 3
License
server
Content
Delivery
Network
DRM 1
DRM 2
DRM 3
Encrypted Media Extensions
( Extends HTMLMediaElement )
CDM 2
CDM 1
MediaKeys
MediaKeySession
License key
acquisition
Encrypted Media Extensions specification to enable playback of protected media content in
browser without the use of plug – ins.
ISO Base media file Format.
Interoperable
media
content

17. HTML5 BROWSERS and EME
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Abstracting Key Management from Browsers
- HTML5 EME (Encrypted Media Extensions)
A generalized interface enabling open source browsers to
support Encrypted Media Extensions – the Content
Decryption Module interface (CDMi) is proprietary.
… Life is not easy

18. CONTENT PROTECTION - WATERMARKING
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Per-Session based Forensic Watermarking
 Forensic watermarking is a process by which a unique, invisible serial number can be added to video or audio content.
The watermark is designed to remain with the content, regardless of how it might be transcoded, resized, downscaled or otherwise
altered for distribution (including recording).
 Mandatory requirement from Hollywood studios to deliver UHD/4K premium contents

19. Chili S.p.A
Via Privata Colico 21
20158, Milano
www.chili.tv
Any Question?

20. Chili S.p.A
Via Privata Colico 21
20158, Milano
www.chili.tv
recruitment@chili-tv.it