Device approval

Overview

OpenTV Platform allows the operator to define limits for the number of devices registered to an account and for the number of approved devices per account:

• A registered device can be either approved or unapproved

• An approved device can sign in and consume content.

• An unapproved device can sign in, but cannot consume content.

• The operator can also restrict how often changes can be made to the approved devices list/

For a client application, this means that:

• If it tries to sign in and the device limit has already been reached, the sign-in will fail. See Authentication.

• If it is not approved, it will not be able to play back content.

• It needs to enable the user to manage the approved and unapproved devices.

Use cases

A client application needs to:

• Check whether the device it is running on is approved or not, so that it can:

  • Enable or disable the ability to consume content.

  • If the device is not approved, check when it can next attempt to approve a device (so it can display this information to the user).

• To implement a device management screen that enables the user to manage approved and unapproved devices:

  • Request the list of approved and not approved devices for the account (so it can display them in a device management screen).

  • Request the addition and/or removal of a device from the account's approved devices list (for example, to change the status of another device to unapproved so that it can request approval for the current device).

The Scenarios section, below, explains how the different limits interact.

Both approved and unapproved devices count towards an account’s device limit (except for devices that belong to a device group whose device group limit has Ignore Device Limit enabled – see Setting device group limits for a device profile).

Note that if the client uses the /ias/v3/token/actions/signOnByUserNamePassword endpoint to sign on, this will automatically add the device to the account's approved devices list on first signon only if:

• The list is not already full, 

• The device is not already on the list, and

• The limit on the number of changes allowed to the approved devices list would not be exceeded by adding the device.

In other signon scenarios, the client should check its approved status after signing in.

Scenarios

There are other devices statuses that, combined with a device's approval status, determine what the device can and cannot do. These are summarised in the following table:

See also

• Managing devices (Subscriber management integration guide)

• Device Management (OpCon documentation)

• Account profiles (OpCon documentation)