Digital Watermarking Alliance Announces Industry Demand for Piracy Deterrence, Broadcast Monitoring and Intelligence Solutions Continues to Grow

Digital Watermarking Alliance Announces Industry Demand for Piracy Deterrence, Broadcast Monitoring and Intelligence Solutions Continues to Grow

Digital Watermarking Alliance Member Companies Include Cinea, Digimarc, GCS Research, Jura, MediaGrid, Media Sciences International, Philips Electronics, Signum, Teletrax, Thomson, Verance, and Verimatrix

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of industry leading companies, today announced growing momentum and interest in digital watermarking solutions that are helping to deter the piracy of movies, monitor and verify the airing of broadcast programming and advertising, and more effectively identify and manage image-based intelligence assets.

Members of the Digital Watermarking Alliance are industry-leading companies that are leading the commercialization and delivery of real-world digital watermarking applications to help media and entertainment customers better identify, track and manage movies, music, TV content, images, identity documents and other media content.

Recent industry developments and news demonstrating growing momentum and interest in digital watermarking solutions include:

* Cinea has announced the launch of its expanded forensic watermarking
technology that allows device specific content tracking across a wide
range of consumer electronics devices. The technology, already
successfully employed in the professional entertainment marketplace,
also allows for high output, session based watermarking in a head end
device such as a "download and burn" server. Widevine plans to deploy
Cinea technology to all 1.5 million users of its current installed base
of IPTV set-top boxes later this year.
http://www.cinea.com/press/71706_SV510.pdf and
http://www.cinea.com/press/RMConsumerLaunch_83006.pdf and
http://www.widevine.com/pr/081_watermarking_consumer_devices.html

* Digimarc and GCS Research are working together on the second phase of a
project that uses digital watermarking for more effective identification
and management of image-based military intelligence. The U.S. Department
of Defense FY07 appropriations bill included $2.6 million for the U.S.
Army Night Vision Electronic Sensor Directorate to embark on the second
phase of the project.
http://www.digimarc.com/media/release.asp?home=news&newsID=510

* Philips announced that their CineFence Anti-Piracy solution has been
generally released and has already been deployed to 1,300 theaters.
Philips has started the rollout of its CineFence anti-piracy technology
watermarking with Christie AIX. This world leader in turnkey digital
cinema systems has already equipped over 1,300 cinemas in the last year
and provides watermark detection services using the Philips CineFence
watermark reading technology. http://www.business-/
sites.philips.com/contentidentification/about/index.html

* Teletrax reports that Fox Broadcasting Company, the United Nations TV,
Direct Impact Group, Direct Response Media, and ITN Networks are among
the latest television broadcasters and advertisers to use Teletrax
digital watermarking solutions to monitor and verify airings of
affiliate stations' use of promotional video materials, direct response
advertisements and other broadcast programming. In addition, Teletrax
announced its entrance into the sports marketing industry with an
agreement to monitor A1GP's live global broadcasts of its motorsports
events. http://www.teletrax.tv/

* Telestream, a provider of multi-format workflow solutions, recently
announced that it is incorporating Philips forensic watermarking into
its video production solution, enabling content owners to better protect
content as it is distributed throughout the production chain.
http://www.telestream.net/news/06_09_05.htm

* Thomson, provider of technology, services, and systems to the Media and
Entertainment industries, announced that major digital cinema server
manufacturers, including Doremi, GDC, QuVis and Time Tamedia, are using
its NexGuard digital watermarking solution to embed the date, time and
place of projection into a digital motion picture's image and soundtrack
during play-out in movie theaters. When this information is extracted
from pirated materials, it pinpoints the exact source of the leakage.
http://www.thomson.net/EN/Home/NewsSearchResults.htm?Keyword=NexGuard

* Kodak Digital Cinema announced it is licensing Thomson's NexGuard
digital cinema watermarking solution for inclusion in its CineServer, a
key component in Kodak's networked system for full digital cinema
presentations. http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/pr.aspx?newsID=606

* Verimatrix has profiled the growing range of partners that have
committed to the commercial availability of VideoMarkTM-enhanced set-top
boxes (STBs). Tilgin, WEGENER, Entone, Softier and Setabox are
integrating VideoMark, Verimatrix's patent-pending forensic watermarking
technology, and Video Content Authority System (VCAS) with their leading
IPTV boxes in response to new content owner and system requirements.
http://www.verimatrix.com/press/news_2006_Aug_31.php

The Digital Watermarking Alliance was launched in September 2006 to build awareness of the value of digital watermarking to content owners, industry, policy makers and consumers (http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org/).

Digital watermarks can identify copyrighted content and associated rights, during and after distribution, to determine copyright ownership and facilitate rights management policy while enabling innovative new content distribution and usage models. Digital watermarks are broadly deployed with billions of watermarked objects and hundreds of millions of watermark detectors in the market, supporting various commercial and government applications. (http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org/casestudies.asp)

For more information about the Digital Watermarking Alliance, please visit: http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org/

About the Digital Watermarking Alliance

The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) is an international alliance of industry leading companies that deliver valuable digital watermarking technology and solutions to a broad range of customers and markets around the world. Member companies include Cinea, Inc., a Dolby company (NYSE:DLB), Digimarc (NASDAQ:DMRC), GCS Research, Jura, MediaGrid, Media Sciences International, Philips Electronics, Signum, Teletrax, Thomson (Euronext 18453; NYSE: TMS), Verance, and Verimatrix. For more information, please visit http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org/

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

Source: Digital Watermarking Alliance

CONTACT: Jeremy Bartram, +1-206-264-1999, Bartram@itstrategies.com, for
Digital Watermarking Alliance

Web site: http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org/

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