In an effort to deter the unlawful copying of HD movies in hotels, Philips is leading the industry with its VTrack™ digital watermarking solution to ensure the security of box-office hits.
Showcased at the HD 2008 Exposition and Conference, the technology makes it possible for hoteliers and studios to trace pirated high-definition (HD) content back to the source. Philips is one of the first manufacturers to offer the feature in its guestroom HD television sets.
The innovative digital watermarking solution eases concerns about in-room content piracy. As a result, studio executives have applauded the initiative to introduce this additional layer of content protection. The company’s watermarking and fingerprinting technology is also being used by major Hollywood studios and music labels for protecting and monetizing their content assets.
"We are excited that Philips has developed a forensic watermark system for the hospitality market," said Richard Berger, senior vice president of new media and technology, Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Adding this additional layer of content protection enables us to explore new business models. We believe it is critical to seek content protection technologies like VTrack that are designed to be invisible and not to interfere with the guest’s enjoyment of entertainment."
Philips hospitality products already offer the highly effective Pro:Idiom™ encryption technology to secure data from the content source to the television. The VTrack solution extends anti-piracy efforts by making electronic and camcorder copies of video material traceable thereby decreasing the risk of piracy. The new feature embeds the video with an invisible watermark that identifies the time, place and location. If a video shows up on the Internet or on pirated DVDs, content owners and law enforcement agencies can use the VTrack watermark data to determine where and when the content was recorded.
Philips is also working with pay-per-view providers that serve the hospitality industry to ensure that any watermarking solution will work seamlessly with their infrastructure.
VTrack is a part of Philips’ broad content identification product portfolio. This collection of state-of-the-art solutions and services effectively sell, share and distribute audio and video content with respect to copyrights.