40 Success Stories: When castLabs Helped Develop APEX 0415
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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of APEX EXPO this year, APEX Media is looking back at “40 Success Stories” in the form of its members’ most significant achievements. Today, we learn how castLabs contributed to the development of the APEX 0415 specification.
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As part of the Airline Passenger Experience Association’s Encoding and Encryption Technologies Working Group (EETWG), castLabs, a company that focuses on digital video delivery solutions, has worked to develop and promote the adoption of APEX 0415.
The APEX 0415 specification is a set of technical standards regarding the digital distribution of content on board aircraft as a means of moving the industry toward fully modern media delivery. It was devised following the establishment of the EETWG in April 2015 by APEX member companies in collaboration with entities such as the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and MovieLabs, among others.
As an industry expert on digital rights management systems with years of experience in video streaming and content security, castLabs contributes to the working group through weekly calls and in face-to-face meetings, helping to guide the security requirements for embedded in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems.
“By establishing standard workflow practices, the industry can lower both infrastructure and maintenance costs, as well as shorten the studio-to-passenger content turnaround time” – Joyce Lin, castLabs.
“As digital media technology has been rapidly changing in recent years, so have the considerations and requirements for IFE video delivery workflows,” explained Joyce Lin, Global Sales Management, castLabs. “To achieve the goal of streamlined industry-wide interoperability for next generation content, APEX 0415 outlines, among other things, a single media delivery format: the Common Media Application Format (CMAF); and the security requirements for playing SD, HD, UHD, and HDR content qualities as well as early-window releases.”
The second version of the specification was finalized and approved at the second APEX TECH 2019 event in Los Angeles in May, and now castLabs is guiding its airline customers through the implementation process. “By establishing standard workflow practices, the industry can lower both infrastructure and maintenance costs, as well as shorten the studio-to-passenger content turnaround time,” Lin continued. “It’s a great milestone for the Association and we’re delighted to have been involved, because the result will be a win-win situation for everybody in the industry!”
castLabs has said it will continue to participate in generating specifications related to video delivery in the in-flight entertainment industry.
See more posts from the 40 Success Stories campaign.