One of the key DRM inflexion points right now is just how to integrate forensic watermarking into a DRM eco-system. On the one hand, conditional access and DRM specialists are threatened with commoditization due to DRM’s becoming browser and hardware specific, and on the other, they can continue to differentiate their offerings using watermarking.
So, when you look at the DRM specialists out there either they have spent a fortune and a long time building their own watermarking, like Verimatrix or Irdeto, or they have bought into it, as Nagra did with Nexguard, or they have a problem on the horizon.
This week Viaccess-Orca moved to get rid of that perceived weakness, by partnering with French forensic watermarking player ContentArmor, a spin out from Technicolor. The move would have been vital for its continued existence – parent company Orange has always been keen to “own” strategic technology assets, and with premium UHD and 4K content owners demanding protection via the Movielabs specification – hardware backed DRM keys and forensic watermarking – Orange had to have this facility at least on its roadmap.
We suspect that if the partnership is successful that Viaccess-Orca may decide it makes sense to make an offer for ContentArmor. Whether it makes sense for it to accept such an offer is another matter. Orca, the Israeli middleware, apps and personalization specialist, accepted such a deal, but it has meant that many other operators are no longer to considering a technology owned by Orange. Viaccess has managed to establish just over 30 customers globally, but is widely criticized by competitors for the control that Orange placed on its development directions.
Viaccess-Orca said that the ContentArmor watermark technology has been integrated into the full range of Viaccess-Orca’s Sentinel content protection solutions, including hybrid card/cardless CAS and proprietary DRM products for multiscreen TV. Not many rivals have such systems working in multiscreen because of the processing workload in putting marks into video as it is decoded, to identify the specific device the stream has been played on. The joint solution will be showcased at Mobile World Congress. ContentArmor claims this is because it operates directly in the bitstream – we presume that means the stream is set up at the cloud end with a watermark as it is delivered – and the firm says this results in ultra-fast embedding and enabling integration at any point of the distribution chain, including set-top boxes, tablets, and smartphones.
Leonid Berkovich, VP at Viaccess-Orca, said, “The use of this technology for TV is gaining momentum, but with smartphones and, notably, tablets becoming more popular as TV viewing platforms, it is also crucial to extend watermarking to the field of companion devices.
ContentArmor was originally conceived within Technicolor post production services for Hollywood studios and was launched in 2013, and last year was involved in a management buy-out.