In Broadcast - March 2015 - 51

51

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 3 | March 2015

InMedia

Watermarking
Helps Secure
Premium Content
By Harrie Tholen,
Senior VP Sales & Marketing

T

he broadcast industry in the Middle
East is booming, with original TV
productions on the increase alongside
growing demand for international
channels and movies.
According to a recent Digital TV
Research report, the number of payTV
homes in the MENA region will reach
21.3 million in 2020.
This is in large part due to increased
investment in ﬁbre broadband,
video
infrastructure
equipment,
and software, enabling providers to
enhance their content offerings and
increase their subscriber base.
The increased consumer demand for
international content via OTT and VoD
services in the connected home has
forced operators to implement content
protection solutions that ensure that
content delivered to the set-top-box or
streamed over the internet is secure.
This enables operators and service
providers to gain the Hollywood
studios' trust, as well as facilitate the
distribution of regional productions.
While some content owners, such
as Hollywood studios, can leverage
multiple release windows to increase
their revenue in other markets,
the death of cinemas in the Middle
East means that studios place a
stronger emphasis on monetisation
via premium TV channels and VoD
services. Market-proven technologies
can help payTV operators to
safeguard
premium
Hollywood
content, particularly early-release
and 4K assets, in order to disrupt the
monetisation of content theft.
Premium sports content is also
at risk of illegal online distribution.
With rising content rights' costs for
sports competitions, it is crucial that
operators maximise revenues by
securing content delivered through
their platforms to avoid unauthorised
streaming.
Traditional Conditional Access and
DRM technologies are not effective
tools to tackle illegal re-distribution,
which is the number one means of
piracy - this is where watermarking
comes into play.

Forensic watermarking inserts an
imperceptible identifying code into
a media asset, whether a movie,
video or any other type of content. By
adding a unique identity disseminated
throughout a piece of media, that
content, along with its owner, becomes
identiﬁable. A digital watermark
is used to enforce contractual
compliance between a content
owner and the intended recipient - it
provides proof of misuse and a link
back to the source of the leak. Forensic
watermarking is integral in deterring
piracy efﬁciently on every platform as
it allows service providers to ﬁnd the
source of pirated content.
Hollywood studios have recognised
the value of forensic watermarking
since it was mandated for digital
cinema more than ten years ago.
Integrated into the recent MovieLabs
speciﬁcations, the studios are now
also making forensic watermarking
mandatory for any operator seeking to
offer early release and 4K content.
As the content industry increasingly
turns to forensic watermarking to
ensure that premium video is fully
secure, technology providers need
to ensure the robustness of their
solutions and adapt to the new use
cases required by the market. With
the addition of real-time watermark
detection for live sports and
Content Delivery Network-agnostic
watermarking for OTT streaming,
forensic watermarking solutions such
as NexGuard provide the missing piece
of the puzzle for content owners who
want to disrupt content and service
theft.

NexGuard, a Civolution company,
provides forensic watermarking
technology and solutions for
protecting media content against
illicit redistribution.
At CABSAT 2015, NexGuard will
demonstrate how broadcasters,
content owners and operators can
leverage forensic watermarking to
offer best in class content protection
on e-screeners, OTT & VoD services.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.winmedia.tv http://www.nexguard.com/ http://www.winmedia.tv
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