PlayReady is a Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

 (DRM) from Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 for portable devices. It was announced in February 2007.

The main differences relative to previous DRM schemes from Microsoft are:

• Some popular features that were already present in other consumer restriction schemes in the market have been added; these include the concept of domain (group of devices belonging to the same user which can share the same licenses), Embedded Licenses (licenses that are embedded in the content files, avoiding a separate step for license acquisition) and envelopes (the ability to DRM arbitrary, potentially non-media content). It is also the protection scheme for IIS Smooth Streaming, Microsoft's adaptive streaming technology.

• It is intended to be platform independent: unlike other Microsoft consumer restriction schemes like Janus
  Janus (DRM)
  Janus is the codename for portable version of Windows Media DRM for portable devices, whose marketing name is Windows Media DRM for Portable Devices introduced by Microsoft in 2004 for use on portable media devices which store and access content offline. Napster To Go was the first online music...
  
  , PlayReady can be ported to any kind of portable device, even if it uses non-Microsoft technology (OS
  Operating system
  An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
  
  , codecs, media player, etc.).

PlayReady competes with other proprietary DRM schemes, most notably Apple's FairPlay

FairPlay

FairPlay is a digital rights management technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime multimedia software and used by the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store. Formerly, all songs in...

 (which has entered the mobile phone market through the iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

) and several other consumer restriction schemes that are competing to become the dominant consumer restriction technology (e.g. OMA DRM

OMA DRM

OMA DRM is a Digital Rights Management system invented by the Open Mobile Alliance, whose members represent mobile phone manufacturers , mobile system manufacturers , mobile phone network operators OMA DRM is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system invented by the Open Mobile Alliance, whose...

).

Microsoft released the first version of the PlayReady suite (Porting Kit for devices, PC SDK and runtime, Server SDK) in June 2008. Silverlight 2.0, released in October 2008, supports content restricted with PlayReady. As of Silverlight 4.0, the implementation of Microsoft PlayReady in Silverlight supports offline content (via persisted license), subscription scenarios (via chained licenses) and online, streaming-only content (via simple non-persistent licenses). Output protection support was also added in Silverlight 4.0.

PlayReady is supported on the Silverlight implementation of Windows Phone 7.

Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 and Windows 7 can allow content providers, such as TV stations, to use the PlayReady PC runtime to locally encrypt premium TV content, including otherwise unrestricted cable and satellite TV signals.

Interoperability

• PlayReady is backwards compatible with Windows Media DRM
  Windows Media DRM
  Windows Media DRM is a Digital Rights Management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio and/or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor can control how that content is used.WMDRM includes the...
  
   10 content, meaning that content encrypted with WM DRM 10 (for instance, content for PlaysForSure devices) will play on a PlayReady terminal.
• PlaysForSure compliant devices won't play PlayReady-encrypted content.

External links

• Official PlayReady website
• Microsoft ready to play with PlayReady - The Register
  The Register
  The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
  
  , 13 February 2008
• MSDN explanations & code snippets
• PlayReady DRM in Silverlight