Video Content Protection: DRM
What is DRM content protection? Unity and Unreal Video Player SDKs with Digital Rights Management (DRM)
As more and more OTT services, or immersive XR/VR/AR apps, games, and metaverses using Unity or Unreal Engine offer premium content inside an interactive and fully immersive 3D world, DRM-protected content has become essential. Additionally, as video has become ubiquitous, security has become a priority. Companies are seeking solutions to control access to sensitive materials. If you’re producing, delivering, and distributing premium video content online, having the necessary DRM protection in place is a must.
- HISPlayer’s Unity Video Player supports Widevine Level 1 DRM on Oculus / Meta Quest devices and Level 3 DRM content protection on Android and iOS devices.
- HISPlayer’s Unreal Engine Video Player supports Widevine Level 3 DRM content protection on Android devices, and VR/AR headsets such as Oculus/Meta Quest, Pico, or HTC. in Android & iOS projects using Unity
What is DRM?
Digital Rights Management (DRM) system secures video content providing the ability to control how people can consume your content, preventing unauthorized use and piracy of copyrighted material. It ensures that your intellectual property remains safe by adding extra layers of security, safeguarding your monetization models, and enforcing your rights in the digital landscape. Usually, content owners and producers like all major Hollywood Studios, Warner Bros., Netflix, Paramoun Pictures, TV Stations, etc. impose others that buy or rent their content to use specific DRM systems to protect the content.
How does DRM for Unity and Unreal Engine (UE) game and application work?
DRM protected videos are encrypted and packaged using multiple DRM schemes for compatibility with various devices. When a user attempts to play the content, the Unity or Unreal Engine video player plugin requests a decryption key from a license server, which verifies the user/player and device’s authorization. Once verified, the server issues a license response with a decryption key, allowing the player to decrypt and play the premium content. Therefore, the video player’s role is crucial in delivering DRM-protected premium content. HISPlayer’s Unity and Unreal Engine (UE) video player plugins support DRM content protection to stream high quality, 8K (UHD) video content inside your games, digital twins, extended reality (XR), mixed reality (MR), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) apps, or Web3 blockchain Games.
The DRM mechanism is embedded in most hardware or operating systems. But, DRM software can also be created by third-party vendors, like our DRM partners: Verimatrix, Nagra, Inka, EZDRM, Intertrust ExpressPlay, and more. Additionally, for your service, we can integrate any third-party DRM library.
Packaging content
To prevent unauthorized playback and copy, DRM requires content to be encrypted and packaged in a compatible format, generally MPEG-DASH or HLS. This can be done as part of the transcoding process, or assets can be encrypted and packaged after the fact.
Widevine and PlayReady both support Common Encryption (CENC) and MPEG-DASH, which means you can encrypt and package your content once and decrypt those assets. FairPlay uses SAMPLE-AES encryption and HLS packaging, so you’ll need to encrypt and package your content twice if you need to support all three systems.
Protected content playback inside Unity and Unreal Engine Games, Web3 blockchain Games, and XR applications
HISPlayer is the only Unity and Unreal Engine video player that supports HLS and DASH video streaming with DRM protection in Android and iOS apps. When it comes to real-time rendering of 3D games and applications, there are some limitations that you should consult with our Video Streaming and Gaming experts.
Otherwise, here are the top three DRM supporting most popular mobile, PC, web browsers, and HMI/set-top devices.
- Google’s Widevine. Widevine-protected content can be played on Android and Chromecast devices.
- Apple’s FairPlay. FairPlay-protected content can be played in Safari on macOS, as well as iPhones, iPads, and AppleTVs.
- Microsoft’s PlayReady. PlayReady-protected content can be played in Microsoft Edge browsers, Windows Phone, Xbox, and other platforms via SDKs.
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HISPlayer:
HISPlayer is the most advanced Unity and Unreal Engine Video Player Plugin that enables premium DASH and HLS Video Streaming inside your Games, VR/AR/XR apps, and Metaverses across all devices. We include Widevine Level 1 DRM content protection and advanced use cases such as multi-stream, multiview, video caching, and ad insertion, achieving the convergence of the OTT and Gaming industries.
Moreover, our fully customizable HTML5 Player SDK for Smart TVs and Gaming Consoles is included in Tizen, WebOS, Web, Xbox, PlayStation and Hisense apps of some of the most advanced OTT services worldwide. It includes features such as ad insertion, customized closed captions, low latency or synchronized ID3 tags. This HTML5 player SDK is part of our Unity and Unreal SDKs, what allows us to optimize the user experience at the deepest level and to customize the SDK’s capability for the most advanced use cases and with no limits.