Johannes Jauch

Google has released a new Chrome version for Windows that supports hardware-backed DRM playback. It may come as a surprise but it was done by making Chrome support PlayReady. Starting with version 142, Chrome supports PlayReady Security Level 3000 which translates to hardware-backed DRM, similar to Widevine Security Level 1. There is a catch, though: it only works on Windows 11 and requires specific capabilities for the combination of CPU and GPU. It’s important to verify compatibility across your user base and plan for graceful fallback where needed.

In today’s digital content landscape, Google Widevine remains the most widely used DRM technology. As streaming ecosystems evolve, the demand for low-latency and highly available DRM services is growing — especially among clients operating in time-sensitive environments.

Axinom DRM is a robust multi-DRM service. For Widevine, Axinom has integrated the official Widevine License Server SDK directly into its service — enabling us to issue licenses without any dependency on Google’s own cloud service.

Did you know that Axinom DRM supports Concurrent Stream Limiting (CSL)? This feature allows you to control how many simultaneous streams a single user can initiate—enforced through robust DRM integration. As a service provider you can configure:

• The maximum number of concurrent streams
• License renewal interval and grace period
• Concurrency enforcement mode

Try out our new tool: Entitlement message generator.

Using this tool, you can select various entitlement options with UI, see the resulting entitlement message data structure, and play a test vector directly using Axinom Media Tools.

Video and streaming businesses turn to Digital Rights Management (DRM) to secure their content, but simply adding DRM is not enough. The effectiveness of DRM depends on how it is implemented and how well it is integrated into a broader security strategy. Poor implementation can lead to vulnerabilities that pirates exploit, negating DRM’s intended purpose.

Our new article DRM Security Best Practices highlights best practices to maximize DRM security and avoid common pitfalls.

New release 6.21.0 of Axinom DRM License Service (PlayReady) is available!

Changes:

• PlayReady Server SDK upgraded from v4.6.7604.13892 to v4.6.7607.0_QFE1. This is a security update released by Microsoft on Oct 26, 2024.

This is a so called required update that every licensee of the Microsoft PlayReady Server SDK has to incorporate into their Server Applications and Services within six months.

A new video-tutorial explaining how to encode a video with DRM protection using Axinom Encoding and Axinom DRM.

Since Google revoked CDMs for older browsers on October 31, 2024, we observe an elevated level of Widevine DRM license rejected errors. We recommend our customers to observe the client error messages, and if "revoked" errors are encountered, to update users' browsers. With the latest revocation, it requires a Chrome version 117+ to deliver a Widevine license successfully.

New release 1.21.0 of Axinom DRM Key Service is available!

Changes:

• Added optional "keySeedId" parameter to /Harmonic V2 endpoint. When set, chooses a specific Key Seed to use for key generation, instead of the default key seed.

Did you know that with Axinom DRM you can also protect pure audio files?

People usually think, DRM (like Widevine/PlayReady/FairPlay) is about video protection. It is correct, but it is NOT ONLY about video. If you have an audio file (say, MP3), you can feed it to Axinom Encoding, which will convert it to MPEG DASH format and encrypt the audio track according to DRM standards. If you provide no video input, there will be no video track in the output DASH manifest.

You can now use all regular video players to play this asset. In UI it makes sense not to display the video area, as there is no video. But the audio track will play. All the same approaches for an entitlement message ("token") acquisition and sending it to a DRM License Service apply.

Try it out yourself.