Alexander Adolf -
Your CTO for Hire
Alexander Adolf is one of the pioneers of digital television in Germany. He spent most of his career in the digital multimedia broadcast industry where he worked on the broadcaster, equipment manufacturer, as well as on the consumer equipment side. Back in 1996 he entered the digital TV broadcast scene as he joined BetaResearch, where he participated in the development and commercial launch of DF-1 (later re-branded Premiere, and today operating as Sky Germany), their head-end system, conditional access system, and d-box™ receiver platform, together forming the first commercial digital Pay-TV service in the German speaking countries. He later moved on to Micronas, where he worked on SoC chip-sets for digital flat-panel TV sets as a senior system architect.
He is actively participating in international standardisation in the DVB Project. In 1997 he joined the DVB Project’s technical experts group TM-GBS. Since 2000 he is chairing this group, which defines some of the central elements of the single most successful, global standard for digital television. In this role he is experienced in interfacing with media politics and regulatory bodies. As of January 2016 he is also serving as a vice chair of the DVB Technical Module, where all of DVB's technical work happens and is coordinated.
In January 2010, Mr. Adolf decided to become independent and offer his experiences collected while working for Pay-TV broadcasters, manufacturers, and in standardisation as an independent consultant under the name of Condition-ALPHA. In addition to consulting and professional services in the technology domain for the digital broadcast industry, he also offers consulting and professional services in the area of IT and system security, leveraging on his experience as an architect and designer of several pay-TV conditional access systems.
Mr Adolf sees a great potential for digital multimedia services in the technology convergence towards the Internet Protocol IP. This lingua franca of the digital era enables a very low entry barrier for platform- as well as service-operators. From the consumers’ point of view this scenario offers a wide choice of inter-operable and reasonably priced devices.
Condition-ALPHA is a member of IT Security Association Germany (TeleTrusT), and has been granted permission to use the trust mark IT Security made in Germany.
Mr Adolf is a member of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).