Civolution company NexGuard aims to demonstrate at IBC why forensic watermarking is a critical tool in operators’ armoury for tackling what it describes as “today’s greatest content threat,†the illegal redistribution of premium entertainment, including live sports content.
NexGuard will accordingly be showcasing its own watermarking solutions on its stand, including ‘subscriber-level’ (i.e. set-top-box or device-level) watermarking for both Premium VOD and 4K, and live sports.
The VOD/4K demo will focus on how operators can meet the Hollywood majors’ tough new content protection requirements for these content genres; while the live sports demo will show how pirated streams shown while a sports event is in progress can be rapidly traced and stopped at source, helping to protect broadcasters’ and operators’ investments in premium sports rights.
There will also be a demonstration of how forensic watermarking works for ‘Escreeners’ and pre-release content – e.g. when movies are made available to controlled groups like critics and award committees ahead of theatrical release – so that broadcasters and operators can see how NexGuard could fit into their 4K-ready or cloud workflow further up the production/transmission chain.
Forensic watermarking – a technique whereby ‘invisible’ data can be hidden within files to pinpoint exactly where in the sequence from production to transmission a piece of video content has been pirated, using which device – first appeared as a core element within Digital Cinema security. NexGuard says it has now evolved to become the core technology for broadcast monitoring, and tracking of pre-release files, disc screeners and eScreeners.
