Complementing its portfolio of content identification products, Philips has introduced VTrack, an advanced watermarking technology that offers pay TV providers a new tool to get a grip on illegal content duplication and distribution.
VTrack embeds an imperceptible, unique identifier into the video signal that does not restrict personal use and enjoyment, but traces pirated content back to a specific subscriber. By using digital watermarking technology in set-top boxes, content pirates will expose themselves to greater legal risk if they attempt large-scale redistribution of content obtained illegally.
The 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 pay TV, video on demand and hotel TV. VTrack supports HD and SD content, is format independent and is transparent for current and next-generation codecs, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264/AVC and VC-1.
The system’s digital watermarks are extremely robust and cannot be separated from the content or altered. Even after severe quality degradation of the video, such as scaling, cropping, compression and camcorder copying, the pirated content can still be traced to a specific subscriber.
For more information, visit www.philips.com/ci.
