Prepress
Digital Watermarking Alliance Reports New Options for Deploying Digital Watermarking, and Increased Adoption across the Media Landscape
Thursday 10. April 2008 - Adoption of digital watermarking by media companies and technology providers to manage and secure digital content across many new forms of distribution is increasing, while more and more media content contains the feature, according to the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA).
The DWA is an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions.
Recent industry developments and news demonstrating continued momentum for digital watermarking solutions include:
— A MultiMedia Intelligence study identified digital watermarking and
fingerprinting as a key growth market that could surpass $500 million
by 2012(1) “Applications leveraging digital watermarking are expanding,
as the technology moves into multiple key roles,” said Mark Kirstein,
president of MultiMedia Intelligence. “Media owners and advertisers
are seeking more visibility and metrics on usage and distribution, or
wish to monetize and control the content as it is distributed via the
Internet, peer-to-peer, and social networks. There are many new
offerings in the market that rely on digital watermarking to make this
possible. Likewise, companies are positioning digital watermarking for
integration into set-top boxes to support early release of HD
programming, and others are incorporating watermarking in next
generation Blu-ray devices.”
— The DWA will be represented at the Digital Hollywood Spring conference
May 8, 2008, on the “Next Generation P2P and Film” panel.
— Cinea, a Dolby company, announced it has signed two new technology
partners for its digital watermarking solutions. SecureMedia is
incorporating Cinea’s technology into its IPTV content security
offering to enable content owners and system operators to track content
origin and distribution information right down to the specific
transaction or device.
Cinea has also
announced that Broadcom Corporation, one of the world’s largest fabless
semiconductor manufacturers, is integrating Cinea’s Running Marks(TM)
solution into Broadcom’s system-on-chip (SoC) decoder platform. The
resulting technology will be made available to all Broadcom customers
with a Cinea Running Marks license, including set-top box vendors,
conditional access vendors, and cable, telecommunications, and
satellite system operators.
— The Nielsen Company and Digimarc Corporation announced a new service —
Nielsen Digital Media Manager — that will enable media companies,
social networks, peer-to-peer services and user generated content sites
to monitor and manage the distribution of media content across the
Internet. Nielsen already uses digital watermarking to encode 95% of
national television programming for its television ratings service, and
the new service will focus initially on the online distribution of
television content in the U.S. The companies expect these new solutions
will commence live beta testing in May.
— Philips is integrating digital watermarking into its line of
hospitality television sets and will soon support a full range of HDTV
sizes, including 26″, 32″, 37″, 42″ and 52″. Hoteliers have long
enjoyed an early-release movie window that allows them to entertain
their guests with box-office hits prior to release on DVD. The Philips
VTrack digital watermarking solution is designed to ease concerns about
piracy that have led certain content owners to withhold high-definition
media from this advance window. In addition, Philips has announced that
five major Hollywood movie studios have approved Philips’ CineFence
forensic marking of digital cinema soundtracks to deter piracy.
— Teletrax has signed contracts with the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), the Atlas Agency, the largest news and distribution
agency in Spain, and Agence France-Presse, the leading global news
agency, to electronically monitor usage of their news content. The
company also added three new direct response advertising clients to its
roster, including G2 Direct & Digital, Kent Creative Group and Gold
Mountain Media, Inc. All will use the Teletrax(R) suite of broadcast
intelligence services to monitor and track broadcast, cable and
satellite television airings of their direct response advertisements.
In addition, Mercury Communications, the largest independent measurable
media company in North America, signed a four-year contract renewal
with Teletrax to electronically monitor and track airings of it long
and short form direct response television advertisements.
— Thomson recently announced that Moovyplay has selected NexGuard(TM),
Thomson’s state-of-the-art content security solution suite, for
implementation into its portable movie rental service. Moovyplay is a
venture developed by Paris-based CPFK, France’s leader in DVD rental
services with 2,200 outlets under three retailer brands: Video Futur,
Cinebank and Video Pilote. The partnership marks the first integration
of a digital video watermarking solution into a portable video device.
NexGuard will be embedded into customized handheld devices created both
by Moovyplay and Archos, which will allow customers to conveniently
rent movies by loading dozens of titles at one time from an in-store
kiosk onto their device.
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— Widevine Technologies has partnered with Digital Latin America (DLA) to
secure premium content for digital pay-TV operators throughout Latin
America. Widevine will encrypt and watermark content that DLA delivers
to 23 countries to fulfill content owners’ requirements for licensing
high-value videos and popular programs. Digital Latin America delivers
premium, high value content via satellite and IP to 100% of the MSOs in
23 countries and to 51 systems across Latin America and is the only
provider in the region that delivers video on demand and pay-per-view
services with blockbuster movies from major Hollywood Studios including
Disney, MGM, Paramount/Dreamworks, Warner Bros. and NBC Universal, as
well as international studios.