By Igor Gamayunov

On October 10-14, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) held its first DTCP Plugfest. This much anticipated and long expected event has facilitated ad-hoc testing between the DTCP Adopters and provided access to Intel test tools. The event was also a venue to engage with experts and discuss trends related to DTCP-IP, a key content protection security technology designed to protect high-value digital content against theft while it is moved between home entertainment devices.

The event was hosted at the Cable Television Laboratories in Louisville, CO, which provided excellent facilities and a very friendly atmosphere.

My focus was on testing Elliptic’s DTCP-IP SDK product and making sure that our sample applications were compatible with other vendors’ applications. I also was very keen to attend the DTCP-IP Plus presentation and learn first-hand about the new features and applications of this extensive specification update.

During the two days at the plugfest we have found a couple of interoperability issues in our product which we have addressed since then. We also helped to detect one interesting issue with the Intel test tool set. That made us feel good… to have contributed to a good cause.

I also took this valuable opportunity to communicate with technical people who are directly responsible for writing and updating the specification, and discuss various topics related to interpreting the specification and implementing it in real applications.

One specific area I was interested in clarifying was the status of the Additional Localization flag of the Device Certificate. This flag, if set, is responsible for invoking the AKE RTT protocol between DTCP-IP devices during the authentication phase. The specification defined this flag as optional and also was optional with the Device Key Set order form. After an interesting discussion with DTLA technical experts it became apparent that this flag is actually mandatory for all DTCP-IP devices.

Last but not least I would like to thank the enthusiastic DTLA president and founder Stephen Balogh for providing a first class facility and an opportunity to discuss and resolve various questions and issues.

A very useful event indeed…