FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Widevine® Awarded 2006 Product of the Year for Best Content Protection
Seattle, Wash., Sept. 21, 2006 –Widevine® Technologies, the leading provider of comprehensive downloadable content protection and digital forensics for video operators worldwide, today announced that its market-leading Widevine Mensor™ has won the prestigious Cable & Satellite International Product of the Year Award for Best Content Protection at a ceremony held at the International Broadcasters Conference in Amsterdam.
The awards are judged independently of Cable & Satellite International based on technical innovation, product usefulness, uniqueness and the extent to which the product is a reality - including deployment status. Judging is conducted by a panel of experts that includes CTOs, senior technologists from international broadcasters and operators and industry analysts.
The Cable & Satellite International Product of the Year Awards 2006 have gained a reputation as one of the most comprehensive and competitive technology awards in the world. The awards are designed to reward technical and product marketing excellence in the cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcasting, IPTV and mobile TV sectors. This year more than 120 entries were received from over 60 companies. The judges chose Widevine Mensor solution because it demonstrated the spirit of true innovation and its first to market achievement that these awards were founded to recognize.
Widevine Mensor invisibly watermarks linear broadcast and video-on-demand (VOD) content at multiple points to indicate where content was last sent, received and viewed. Mensor enables content owners, video aggregators and service operators to enforce theft deterrence and content traceability. Using best-of-breed partners, Mensor watermarks content at each stage of a multi-node content delivery network, including on some of the most deployed IPTV consumer devices in the world.
Reza Rassool, Chief Engineer and head of digital forensics for Widevine Technologies stated, “Widevine Mensor employs pluggable watermarking algorithms which have already achieved industry approval and are used in the Academy Awards and digital cinema today. Additionally, the intellectual property of each plug-in component is fully licensed with Digimarc and other relevant IP sources. Widevine has traditionally offered renewable client security as part of its core content protection solution, Widevine Cypher. Now with Mensor, Widevine has extended this renewability to watermarking.”
“Widevine Technologies continues to invest in research and development for innovative technologies such as watermarking, mobile multimedia and digital copy protection for TV on PCs in order to strengthen our efforts to meet emerging operator needs,” said Glenn Morten, Widevine’s Chief Technical Officer.
Widevine Mensor began as a media tracking technology based on content fingerprinting and later evolved to include forensic marks. First used by the major studios, Widevine Mensor helped in successful court rulings against Grokster, Ltd. and Kazaa. Widevine Mensor currently protects approximately 3000 hours a month of VOD content distributed by TVN Entertainment.
About Widevine Technologies, Inc.
Widevine is the leading provider of content security solutions for IP video operators worldwide. Widevine enables telco, cable, satellite, internet and mobile service operators to generate new revenue opportunities through the secure distribution, identification and tracking of digital content.
Utilizing a combination of downloadable conditional access and digital rights management techniques, Widevine Cypher Suite enables operators to acquire and license premium studio content and, through unique patented technologies, reduce capital and operational expenditures. Widevine Cypher persistently encrypts both digital broadcast and video-on-demand (VOD) content, regardless of video infrastructure, network protocols or compression technologies. An innovator in the industry, Widevine invented the downloadable, solution Cypher Virtual SmartCard™ client which today protects more IP video set-top boxes, consumer electronics devices and PCs in the industry than any other vendor.
Widevine is a privately held corporation headquartered in Seattle, WA, funded by Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Charter Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd (DNP), PaceSetter Capital Group, Phoenix Partners, TELUS (NYSE: TU) and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
For more information see Widevine Technologies at www.widevine.com.
Media Contact:
Eric Moser
Ruder Finn Chicago (for Widevine Technologies)
Tel: +1 312 329 3908
mosere@ruderfinn.com
All trade names, trademarks, and/or service marks appearing herein are owned by their respective holders. |
