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Philips introduces VTrack, a watermarking technology offering PayTV providers a tool to get a grip on illegal content
April 11, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- Complementing its extensive portfolio of content identification products, Philips introduces VTrack, an advanced watermarking technology that offers PayTV providers a new tool to get a grip on illegal content duplication and distribution.
VTrack embeds an imperceptible and indelible unique identifier into the video signal in a consumer friendly manner, as it does not restrict personal use and enjoyment of entertainment content, but pirated content can be traced back to a specific PayTV subscriber. By utilizing watermarking technology in set-top boxes, content pirates will expose themselves to greater legal risk if they attempt large-scale redistribution of improperly obtained content. Philips VTrack will enable content providers to confidently broadcast more high definition and early release material that is typically at higher risk for piracy.
"We are thrilled that Philips has entered the market with a session based, forensic watermark system. Forensic watermarks have already shown their merit in PayTV applications and help protect our premium content from unauthorized redistribution by counterfeiters and others," says Andrew G. Setos, President of Engineering, Fox Group. "We look forward in the coming weeks to working with Philips to validate the performance of their system in our lab."
The VTrack forensic watermarking product, designed especially for digital consumer devices such as set-top boxes and integrated digital TVs, provides the industry with an ideal solution to protect premium, copyrighted content spanning across PayTV, Video on Demand, and hotel TV. VTrack supports HD and SD content, is format independent and is therefore transparent for current and next generation codecs, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264/AVC and VC-1.
"This additional layer of content protection is crucial to identify the source of pirated PayTV content," says Nicholas Dunn, Marketing Director of Broadcom, DBS Products. "The integration of Philips watermarking with our chipsets allows for a short time to market and is a perfect match for our video processor technology."
Royal Philips Electronics NV (NYSE: PHG; Amsterdam: PHI)
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