IFA 2009, Berlin, Germany – As high definition entertainment takes off in homes around the world, Philips is to provide business and leisure travelers with the same high quality viewing experience by launching the first HDTV platform for the European hospitality industry.
Consumers are becoming increasingly familiar with the superior picture and sound quality of high definition entertainment, thanks to the availability of both HDTV services but also the growing popularity of Blu-ray Disc and more than a decade of the near-universal DVD format.
Access to high definition content is steadily growing in Europe, where almost 60 million households now own high definition-capable TV sets, a number set to double over the next three years. As result, travelers are now expecting the same high quality when they stay in a hotel as they are able to access at home.
Philips is to match this expectation by launching UltimateHD an end-to-end platform on which hospitality business owners can build an HDTV system to meet their needs. Built around a choice of four HDTV models, ranging from 26-inch (66cm) through to 42-inch (106cm) screen sizes,
UltimateTV provides hotel guests with a vivid, lifelike widescreen viewing experience thanks to Philips’ proprietary suite of picture enhancement technologies, Pixel Plus HD. All sets deliver Dolby™ Digital 5.1 surround sound and multichannel audio for language options. The sets also feature integrated DVB-T and DVB-C digital decoders, removing the need for additional HDTV set-top boxes, which enables quick and easy installation by the hospitality customer.
UltimateHD applies a number of end-user insight driven innovations driven, such as Theme TV. This simplified user interface for hotel entertainment systems helps guests navigate through the multiple channels available in modern hotels by using flags or themes to group and indentify channels based on language, nationality or topic.
Philips has also worked very closely with the world’s major film studios and content providers to ensure that premium high definition entertainment offered via UltimateHD meets their critical requirements for digital rights management. As a consequence, UltimateHD employs a robust security package consisting of the VSecure content protection and VTrack content identification solutions.
Philips UltimateHD HDTV system for hotels will be launched in October in Europe.
Washington, DC, May 28, 2009 – The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) today announced key findings from a recently commissioned survey on piracy deterrence. The study, conducted by Interpret, aimed to determine whether the inclusion of Digital Serial Numbers (DSNs) in online content would deter illegal file sharing. The results showed that DSNs would deter illegal downloading among 33 percent of the 994-person sample and deter illegal uploading among 52 percent.
DSNs represent a new way to track media content by digitally watermarking audio or video content such as music, movies or TV programming with unique, imperceptible digital identification numbers. Unlike Digital Rights Management, DSNs allow consumers to freely access content and make multiple copies for backup use or for different playing devices. Should the content be used illegally, however, the DSN can be associated back to the original buyer.
Earlier this year Teletrax announced a multi-year contract renewal with the NBC Agency, a division of NBC Universal Inc., to electronically monitor and analyze affiliate stations' usage of its on-air television show promotions across all 210 U.S. television markets. And Philips announced the world’s first flat panel TV with integrated watermarking for the hospitality market. In an effort to deter the unlawful copying of HD movies in hotels, Philips is leading the industry with its integrated VTrack digital watermarking.
The DWA will co-host the “Content Rights/ Content Monetization Dinner” at Digital Hollywood Fall, on Wednesday October 29.
Medialink Board Approves Philips Assuming Full Ownership of Teletrax
2008/08/14
Philips to Own 100% of Teletrax and Assume Operations
NEW YORK, Aug. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK), a leading provider of diversified media services for professional communicators and marketers, today announced that its board of directors has approved an offer from Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (NYSE: PHG) to assume full ownership of Medialink's ownership interest in Teletrax.
The transaction, which is subject to standard due diligence procedures, is expected to be consummated by the end of the month. Under the terms of the offer, Philips, which currently owns 24% of the Teletrax entities, would assume Medialink's 76% ownership stake in both Teletrax subsidiaries for a reimbursement of up to approximately $275,000 of certain net operating costs incurred by the Company prior to closing, subject to certain post-closing adjustments. Upon closing of the transaction, Philips would own 100% of the Teletrax entities and Medialink would have no further funding obligations. Under the terms of the offer, Philips would provide the Teletrax(R) service to Medialink for use by its media communications services clients.
"Over the years, Medialink and Philips have worked in concert operating Teletrax. This transaction enables Philips to use its resources to position Teletrax as a solid provider of services, well equipped to address the converging markets of broadcast and Internet monitoring," said Laurence Moskowitz, Chief Executive Officer of Medialink. "Philips will assume full responsibility for all operating matters upon closing, providing a seamless transition for clients, employees, and vendors. This transaction will enable us to preserve capital and better focus our efforts and resources on our media communications services business."
Digimarc Announces Record Date for Spin-Off
2008/07/31
Digimarc Stockholders as of August 1, 2008 to Participate in Distribution
Beaverton, Ore. — July 31, 2008 — The Board of Directors of Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC) ("Digimarc") has declared 5:30 p.m. EDT on Friday, August 1, 2008 as the record date and time to be used to determine which Digimarc stockholders are entitled to receive shares of common stock of DMRC Corporation — the entity that will operate Digimarc's existing Digital Watermarking business — in the spin-off of that business.
Shares of DMRC Corporation common stock will initially be held by a trust for the benefit of Digimarc stockholders of record on the record date and time for the spin-off, pending the effectiveness of a Registration Statement on Form 10, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Following the effectiveness of the Form 10, shares of DMRC Corporation common stock will be distributed to Digimarc stockholders as of the record date and time for the spin-off on the basis of one share of DMRC Corporation common stock for every three and one-half shares of Digimarc common stock held by the stockholder at that time. During the period that the trust retains possession of the shares of DMRC Corporation common stock, and prior to their distribution, the beneficial interests in such shares will not be certificated or tradeable. The transfer to the trust for the benefit of Digimarc stockholders of record as of the record date and time for the spin-off will occur prior to L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc.'s ("L-1") acceptance of the shares validly tendered pursuant to L-1's tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Digimarc common stock, which is expected to occur at 12:00 midnight EDT on Friday, August 1, 2008.
Digimarc Board Approves $310 Million All-Cash Offer from L-1 Identity Solutions
2008/06/30
Beaverton, Ore.— June 30, 2008 — Digimarc Corporation ("Digimarc") (NASDAQ: DMRC) today announced that Digimarc has signed an amended definitive merger agreement with L-1 Identity Solutions ("L-1") (NYSE: ID). The proposed transaction values the ID Systems Business of Digimarc at $310 million, an increase of approximately $50 million over the purchase price provided in the existing merger agreement between the parties. The revised transaction will be effected through a tender offer, followed by a merger of Digimarc with a wholly-owned subsidiary of L-1.
The Digimarc Board of Directors unanimously approved the new offer from L-1 and is recommending that Digimarc's stockholders tender into the offer. The Company has terminated discussions with Safran regarding their non-binding expression of interest in acquiring the ID Systems Business. According to Bruce Davis, Digimarc Chairman and CEO, Digimarc's best interests are served by proceeding with L-1 under the terms of the revised agreement announced today. He noted that, "The L-1 proposal provides shareholders with a higher all cash price than indicated by Safran and that the tender offer approach proposed by L-1 should expedite closing of the transaction."
Regarding customer and employee interests Davis said, "L-1 CEO Bob La Penta has a clear and convincing vision of global needs for improved identity management. The combination of our ID Systems Business with L-1 positions L-1 as a world leader in providing identity management solutions, with an unrivalled portfolio of technologies, expertise, experience, and relationships. This comes at a very opportune time as many of our customers are considering significant security upgrades and the US government has awarded tens of millions of dollars of grant monies to improving America's driver license issuance systems."
As previously announced on June 23, 2008, the Federal Trade Commission has granted early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino ("HSR") antitrust review process. Consummation of the transaction now requires only the completion of the tender offer, the spin-off of Digimarc's digital watermarking business along with Digimarc's cash, and other customary closing conditions.
Under the terms of the amended merger agreement, the tender offer is expected to commence no later than July 7, 2008 and to remain open for 20 business days. The spin-off of Digimarc's digital watermarking business will occur prior to the expiration date of the tender offer.
Digital Watermarking Alliance Endorses Privacy Principles
2008/05/29
Washington, DC, May 29, 2008 – The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions, announced its endorsement of the Privacy Principles for Digital Watermarking issued today by the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Digital watermarking is being widely adopted to support new entertainment experiences for consumers, enable new content distribution methods, communicate copyright information, monitor broadcasts and Internet traffic, enhance security of documents, protect brands, and identify specific copies of media.
Even though billions of digitally watermarked objects have been successfully deployed without any known privacy issues, and only a very small subset of watermarking applications have any potential bearing on privacy, the DWA believes that by proactively embracing best practices as recommended by the CDT, potential privacy issues can be effectively addressed prior to new solutions being implemented. This will ease the way for broad industry-wide adoption, enable new media distribution models, and enhance access to valuable content for consumers.
The DWA also announced it will undertake outreach efforts to ensure digital watermarking applications across all forms of media content are designed with privacy principles in mind, and will continue to advocate for awareness within industry of the need for strong privacy stewardship in the distribution of digital content.
“Digital watermarking has enjoyed broad adoption across many segments of industry and government, and in areas where interoperability is necessary and privacy needs to be safeguarded, we believe watermarking is an ideal solution,” said Reed Stager, chairman of the Digital Watermarking Alliance. “The combination of digitally watermarked content and respect for consumer privacy will further broaden adoption and unleash new distribution models. We applaud the Center for Democracy & Technology’s focus on digital watermarking and its efforts to gather input from a broad array of stakeholders in developing its recommended best practices.”
Digital Watermarking Alliance Reports New Options for Deploying Digital Watermarking
2008/04/10
Las Vegas, Nevada, April 10, 2008 – Adoption of digital watermarking by media companies and technology providers to manage and secure digital content across many new forms of distribution is increasing, while more and more media content contains the feature, according to the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA). The DWA is an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions.
Recent industry developments and news demonstrating continued momentum for digital watermarking solutions include:
• A MultiMedia Intelligence study identified digital watermarking and fingerprinting as a key growth market that could surpass $500 million by 20121 “Applications leveraging digital watermarking are expanding, as the technology moves into multiple key roles,” said Mark Kirstein, president of MultiMedia Intelligence. “Media owners and advertisers are seeking more visibility and metrics on usage and distribution, or wish to monetize and control the content as it is distributed via the Internet, peer-to-peer, and social networks. There are many new offerings in the market that rely on digital watermarking to make this possible. Likewise, companies are positioning digital watermarking for integration into set-top boxes to support early release of HD programming, and others are incorporating watermarking in next generation Blu-ray devices.”
• The DWA will be represented at the Digital Hollywood Spring conference May 8, 2008, on the “Next Generation P2P and Film” panel.
• Cinea, a Dolby company, announced it has signed two new technology partners for its digital watermarking solutions. SecureMedia is incorporating Cinea’s technology into its IPTV content security offering to enable content owners and system operators to track content origin and distribution information right down to the specific transaction or device. For more information, visit http://www.cinea.com/press/032008_SecureMediaCinea.pdf. Cinea has also announced that Broadcom Corporation, one of the world’s largest fabless semiconductor manufacturers, is integrating Cinea’s Running Marks™ solution into Broadcom’s system-on-chip (SoC) decoder platform. The resulting technology will be made available to all Broadcom customers with a Cinea Running Marks license, including set-top box vendors, conditional access vendors, and cable, telecommunications, and satellite system operators. See http://www.cinea.com/press/0802_Cinea_Broadcom.pdf
• The Nielsen Company and Digimarc Corporation announced a new service — Nielsen Digital Media Manager — that will enable media companies, social networks, peer-to-peer services and user generated content sites to monitor and manage the distribution of media content across the Internet. Nielsen already uses digital watermarking to encode 95% of national television programming for its television ratings service, and the new service will focus initially on the online distribution of television content in the U.S. The companies expect these new solutions will commence live beta testing in May. Visit http://www.nielsen.com/media/2007/pr_071205.html or http://www.digimarc.com/media/release.asp?newsID=610
• Philips is integrating digital watermarking into its line of hospitality television sets and will soon support a full range of HDTV sizes, including 26", 32", 37", 42" and 52". Hoteliers have long enjoyed an early-release movie window that allows them to entertain their guests with box-office hits prior to release on DVD. The Philips VTrack digital watermarking solution is designed to ease concerns about piracy that have led certain content owners to withhold high-definition media from this advance window. In addition, Philips has announced that five major Hollywood movie studios have approved Philips' CineFence forensic marking of digital cinema soundtracks to deter piracy.
• Teletrax has signed contracts with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Atlas Agency, the largest news and distribution agency in Spain, and Agence France-Presse, the leading global news agency, to electronically monitor usage of their news content. The company also added three new direct response advertising clients to its roster, including G2 Direct & Digital, Kent Creative Group and Gold Mountain Media, Inc. All will use the Teletrax® suite of broadcast intelligence services to monitor and track broadcast, cable and satellite television airings of their direct response advertisements. In addition, Mercury Communications, the largest independent measurable media company in North America, signed a four-year contract renewal with Teletrax to electronically monitor and track airings of it long and short form direct response television advertisements. Visit www.teletrax.tv/index.php/News/Teletrax/ for more information.
• Thomson recently announced that Moovyplay has selected NexGuard™, Thomson’s state-of-the-art content security solution suite, for implementation into its portable movie rental service. Moovyplay is a venture developed by Paris-based CPFK, France’s leader in DVD rental services with 2,200 outlets under three retailer brands: Video Futur, Cinebank and Video Pilote. The partnership marks the first integration of a digital video watermarking solution into a portable video device. NexGuard will be embedded into customized handheld devices created both by Moovyplay and Archos, which will allow customers to conveniently rent movies by loading dozens of titles at one time from an in-store kiosk onto their device. For more information, please visit: http://www.thomson.net/GlobalEnglish/Corporate/News/Pages/movieplay-video-rental-service.aspx
• Widevine Technologies has partnered with Digital Latin America (DLA) to secure premium content for digital pay-TV operators throughout Latin America. Widevine will encrypt and watermark content that DLA delivers to 23 countries to fulfill content owners’ requirements for licensing high-value videos and popular programs. Digital Latin America delivers premium, high value content via satellite and IP to 100% of the MSOs in 23 countries and to 51 systems across Latin America and is the only provider in the region that delivers video on demand and pay-per-view services with blockbuster movies from major Hollywood Studios including Disney, MGM, Paramount/Dreamworks, Warner Bros. and NBC Universal, as well as international studios.
Digimarc's ID Systems Business to be Acquired by L-1 Identity Solutions
2008/03/24
Digimarc to Focus on Growing Demand for Digital Watermarking Solutions
BEAVERTON, OR. — March 24, 2008 — Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its ID Systems business to L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: ID) in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $250 million based on the current market price of L-1 company stock. The acquisition has been approved by the respective Board of Directors of each company.
Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Digimarc stockholders will receive 50 percent of the purchase consideration in shares of L-1 stock and 50 percent in cash, subject to variations in the price of L-1 stock. The cash consideration is approximately $120 million. The number of L-1 shares to be issued will be based on the average price of L-1 stock over the 20 consecutive trading days ending five days prior to closing of the transaction, which based on the current market price of L-1 stock is approximately 10.3 million shares. If the price of L-1 stock exceeds $14 per share, the number shares will be reduced. Under the definitive agreement, the maximum number of L-1 shares that can be issued is 11.3 million. As part of the transaction, L-1 has agreed to purchase $5 million of the common stock of the new digital watermarking company at fair market value immediately following the spin-off. For a more detailed description of the terms and conditions of the transaction, please review the public filing of the agreement.
Pursuant to the definitive agreement, Digimarc's Digital Watermarking business, together with all of Digimarc's cash, will, immediately prior to closing of the acquisition, be contributed to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digimarc which will be distributed to Digimarc's shareholders in a taxable spin-off transaction. Digimarc and L-1 will finalize the details of allocations between the Digital Watermarking business and the ID Systems business to be acquired by L-1, as well as the terms of transition services and license agreements between the two entities, with the next 45 days.
According to Bruce Davis, Digimarc Chairman and CEO, "The leadership of our companies shares a common vision for the future of identity management and the tremendous significance it has on the security and prosperity of people around the world. High quality and timely provision of ID solutions is particularly important in the United States where federal and state governments are investing in much more comprehensive and secure systems than at any time in our past. The addition of Digimarc's ID business to L-1's secure identity management portfolio will help our customers and theirs to rapidly move toward compliance with new federal regulations such as the REAL ID Act. The extensive offering made possible by this combination will more effectively address many important goals, including strengthening national security, enhancing transportation safety, and protecting legitimate commercial interests. In the international arena, this combination will enable L-1 to play a more significant role in the substantial global market for secure identification solutions."
"The synergies between our secure credentialing businesses make this a natural combination and one that will deliver great benefit to our customers and the industry," said Robert V. LaPenta, Chairman and CEO of L-1 Identity Solutions. "Digimarc's expertise in centralized production, together with L-1's biometric recognition and document authentication capabilities, will enable us to provide a secure end-to-end solution for issuance of government credentials like driver's licenses. Additionally, we believe that together we will offer the best in class technology to meet the needs of U.S. and international credentialing programs."
"This relationship comes at a particularly opportune time for Digimarc, as we are experiencing an inflection point in adoption and revenue growth for digital watermarking," said Davis. "Our technology is beginning to permeate the full range of media content, from banknotes and secure credentials to television, movies, music, video games, digital images, advertisements, packaging, and industrial goods. This transaction represents a great step forward for our shareholders, employees, and customers. As we combine our ID Systems assets with global leader L-1 to form a more comprehensive offering responsive to our customers' evolving needs, we are also redoubling our focus on the realization of our founding vision to making digital watermarking a standard feature in all media content. This is a very exciting moment in our history."
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2008 and is subject to customary regulatory approvals, including expiration or termination of any applicable waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, completion of the spin-off of Digimarc's Digital Watermarking business, and other closing conditions, including approval by Digimarc stockholders at the stockholder meeting.
MultiMedia Intelligence Identifies Digital Watermarking & Fingerprinting As Key New Opportunity
2008/01/21
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., January 21, 2008—MultiMedia Intelligence reports that applications leveraging content identification technologies such as digital watermarking and fingerprinting are growing rapidly and could surpass US$500 million worldwide by 2012. Key applications include Internet and broadcast content monitoring, metadata association, copyright control, content protection and forensics, and interactive advertising.
“Non-linear media distribution requires new enabling technologies, beyond traditional encryption-based Digital Rights Management,” according to Mark Kirstein, president of MultiMedia Intelligence. “The growth of peer-to-peer distribution, social networks, and content piracy is accelerating the need for watermarking and fingerprinting.”
Digital watermarking will also compliment Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Conditional Access technologies. Companies, such as Cinea, Philips and Verimatrix, are positioning transactional digital watermarking for integration in set-top boxes to increase content traceability and security. This goal is to convince content owners to support earlier release of High Definition video assets for video-on-demand and enable incremental revenue for pay TV operators. Fox has already communicated that they will mandate watermarking for early-release HD content.
The new MultiMedia Intelligence research also found that:
- Content owners are continuing to pressure web properties and other network owners to police their content as a result of the proliferation of “user generated content” and social networks, coupled with users posting copyrighted media.
- Fingerprinting and watermarking will play a pivotal role in broadband operators’ developing plans to filter peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic on their networks to restrict copyrighted material that is being illegally distributed.
- Greater processing capabilities in consumer electronics equipment is enabling low cost transactional DWM in consumer electronics and mobile devices.
- Digital watermarks will ultimately become a key enabler for tracking non-linear interactive advertising, supporting ad association, tracking and reporting.
For more information, visit: http://multimediaintelligence.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=1
Digital Watermarking Alliance Grows to 17 Members
2007/09/26
Launched one year ago, the Digital Watermarking Alliance has grown by 40 percent and expanded its international footprint with the addition of DataMark Technologies, Gibson, ISAN-IA, MarkAny and Widevine Technologies
Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 26, 2007 – The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions, today announced the DWA has grown by 40 percent since its founding one year ago, bringing the total number of DWA members to 17 organizations from around the world.
The five new member companies are: DataMark Technologies (Singapore), Gibson (U.S.), ISAN-IA (Switzerland), MarkAny (South Korea) and Widevine Technologies (U.S.).
“The Digital Watermarking Alliance has had an incredible first year, growing from 12 founding companies to 17 organizations serving the commercial and government markets with proven digital watermarking applications and products,” said John Utley, vice chairman of the DWA. “We are pleased to expand the membership and international representation in the Alliance with DataMark Technologies, Gibson, ISAN-IA, MarkAny and Widevine and look forward to working with these innovative companies as we continue creating awareness for the value of digital watermarking in the various commercial and government markets.”
Medialink To Launch Internet Video Management
2007/07/10
‘Mediaseed’ to Provide Digital Collaboration, Asset Management, Distribution and Tracking for Communications Professionals
NEW YORK, July 10, 2007 – Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK) today announced the upcoming launch of Mediaseed, a new Web-based content management platform that offers a digital suite of collaboration, archiving, publishing, and evaluation features for corporate marketing and communications professionals. Mediaseed will provide Web 2.0 technology and applications via its website www.mediaseed.tv to enhance Medialink’s digital consulting capabilities and enable its clients to prepare, distribute and track their rich media marketing campaigns, public relations announcements and public affairs programs.
Medialink currently supports digital newsrooms for select clients and regularly distributes video via the Web to hundreds of Internet sites, in addition to its analog and digital delivery to traditional broadcasters. Mediaseed will be formally launched by Medialink in both the United States and United Kingdom in the fall of 2007.
“Mediaseed is designed to offer an elegant, robust and scalable enterprise solution to manage and execute sophisticated broadcast and broadband media strategies all on one desktop application,” said Larry Thomas, chief operating officer of Medialink. “Mediaseed is intended to enable corporations, associations, and not-for-profit organizations to manage dynamically-updated Web and broadcast results through password-protected online portals. We believe that the Mediaseed platform will also inspire clients to create professional niche communities, including applications such as internal project-sharing with colleagues using broadcast-quality assets or branded Internet TV channels to continually engage the public, journalists, employees, or industry partners.”
Founded in 1986, Medialink produces and distributes video to television stations domestically and internationally on behalf of its 750 clients worldwide. During the past several years, the Company has been expanding its broadband distribution network with syndicators and aggregators, such as Blinkx, Brightcove, Voxant, and Clip Syndicate and also posting its clients’ content on such popular sites as Yahoo!, Google, YouTube, MySpace, AOL Uncut, Metacafe, Grouper, Revver, Veoh, Vmix, and Broadcaster. The Company also produces and distributes webcasts, “webisodes” and video advertisements. Through its alliance with Getty Images, the company also offers photographic creation and distribution services.
“With our extensive client base and rich history of creating short-form, informational video on behalf of our impressive list of clients – ranging from General Motors to General Mills, from Siemens to Intel – we believe we are ideally suited to be the consultative, creative and technical conduit for our clients in this global online marketing trend,” said Laurence Moskowitz, chief executive officer of Medialink. “In addition to our powerful arsenal of tools and client experience, Medialink’s consultative approach and dedicated client service will firmly establish us as the partner of choice for professional communicators.”
Mediaseed is being built upon a state-of-the-art digital asset management system that the Company deployed and integrated into its global media operations in 2006, which now becomes the “heart” of Mediaseed. During that time, Medialink appointed Joe Tripician, an Emmy Award-winning streaming video veteran, to lead its broadband product development and work closely with its Internet media relations team that has generated a targeted and qualified proprietary contact database of thousands of video-enabled sites.
With Mediaseed, Medialink clients will be able to enter their own customized “Control Room,” where they will be able to post video, select distribution pathways, and literally “press the button” to disseminate that video worldwide. With another click, clients also will be able to track video usage on television, via Medialink’s exclusive global television tracking service, Teletrax™, and view its publication on various Internet sites. Monthly client fees for Mediaseed will be determined based on the amount of rich media they need to manage and by the distribution and tracking features they select.
Digital Watermarking Alliance Publishes White Paper Proposing Solution to Orphan Works Issue
2007/02/05
Digital Watermarking Alliance Publishes White Paper Proposing Solution to Orphan Works Issue
Encourages policy makers to embrace digital watermarking to enable content owners and users to identify copyrighted works and address the challenge of orphan works
WASHINGTON DC, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions, today announced a new white paper that discusses the key role digital watermarking can play in addressing the issue of orphan works.
Today, a large number of "orphan works" -- presumably copyrighted works whose owners cannot be identified or located -- exists. Typically, such works are excerpts or newly digitized versions of books, movies, photos, and music whose ownership information has been stripped away or lost during distribution, re-formatting or editing.
Unfortunately for those individuals and organizations seeking permission to use such works, much of this rich material ends up left untouched due to liability issues surrounding unspecified ownership.
Published by the DWA, the white paper proposes that policymakers consider facilitating the adoption of technologies, such as digital watermarking, to address the challenge of orphan works and copyright owner identification. Digital watermarks are available and widely deployed today and can help speed and facilitate deployment of online digital content by enabling identification of copyrighted content, facilitating rights management policy, and enhancing consumer experiences.
Philips introduces MediaHedge, a content clearing service for content owners and content users
2006/12/14
Automatic copyrighted video detection based on Philips video fingerprinting technology
Los Angeles, California – Philips Content Identification, a line of business in Philips Electronics, announces MediaHedge: a content rights clearing service for content owners and content users. This Philips service helps both the entertainment industry and the end-user to optimally sell, share and distribute content with respect for copyrights in an easy, controlled and automated way.
MediaHedge is an automated rights clearance system, which can replace the current process in which web hosts remove copyrighted material from their websites manually after being requested to do so by the rights owner. Once MediaHedge has identified the upload of copyrighted material, the web host can then allow, restrict or prohibit the use of the newly uploaded content on its video sharing website or peer-to-peer network, depending on the content owner’s wishes. MediaHedge is consumer friendly and does not restrict the use of content in their own domain nor does it limit the use of increasingly popular video sharing websites.
The MediaHedge content clearing service fully utilizes Philips’ state-of-the-art Video Fingerprinting and Database Matching technology, which has already been successfully introduced to the market. A video fingerprint, extracted from the content during upload, is matched to the official fingerprint database provided by the content owners. In this way, clear rules for the use of copyrighted content are obtained directly from the content owners, since they maintain full ownership and control over the fingerprint database.
Philips Fingerprinting technology is capable of identifying existing video material that is currently in circulation, unlike watermarking that requires information to be embedded into the video content prior to release. The robust fingerprint matching system is capable of identifying video even when it is severely degraded and can recognize very short video clips from anywhere within the original video material, irrespective of any audio manipulations.
“Controlling the legitimate use of copyrighted seemed an almost impossible task when hundreds of thousands of files are being uploaded to popular video-share websites every day,” says Ronald Maandonks, General Manager of Philips Content Identification. “Fortunately, there is now a solution in the shape of Philips MediaHedge that works right across the industry, helping content owners to protect their valuable assets, and helping content users and consumers to enjoy video sharing features without risking legal action because of copyright infringement.”
Philips Content Identification manages access to the system for all parties and provides a full installation and maintenance service of the MediaHedge system for content owners and web hosting companies alike. The MediaHedge system is available now from Philips Content Identification.
Teletrax Executive to Discuss Impact of Video Watermarking at Direct Marketing Conference
2006/10/16
DMA06 Panel Will Focus on Technological Transformation of Advertising Management
SAN FRANCISCO, October 16, 2006 – John Utley, vice president of U.S. business operations for Teletrax, will examine the management benefits of video watermarking for the television advertising industry during a session to be presented at the DMA06 conference, it was announced today at the annual gathering of direct marketing executives.
Teletrax, a global broadcast intelligence company is a subsidiary of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK), and offers the first and only digital video monitoring and content tracking service that provides vital television intelligence on a global scale to video providers such as entertainment studios, news organizations, TV syndicators, and the advertising industry. Teletrax is a joint venture between Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG) and Medialink.
Sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, DMA06 serves as a forum for direct marketing professionals to discuss the latest industry trends. During the panel titled, “Leading Edge Web Based Technology That is Transforming DRTV Campaign Management,” which will take place on Thursday, October 19, 2006, at 12:45 p.m., Utley will discuss how advances in video watermarking have catapulted television advertising measurement to new levels of precision and speed, which can result in more effective analysis and management of direct response campaigns.
“As the media landscape experiences momentous changes and the television viewing audience continues to fragment, direct response companies must rely on sophisticated business evaluation tools, such as Teletrax, to more rigorously assess the return on investment on advertising campaigns,” said Utley. “The Internet has become the equivalent of a central nervous system for direct response advertisers and agencies to properly manage each campaign, as constantly-streaming data from multiple sources are collected, analyzed and organized. To remain competitive and meet intended business objectives, advertising and marketing professionals now demand instantaneous and seamless integration of results on a uniform reporting platform – a decidedly modern concept in the TV advertising industry.”
Alliance Formed by Industry Leading Companies to Communicate Benefits of Digital Watermarking
2006/09/20
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, Calif., Sept. 20, 2006 – The Digital Watermarking Alliance, an international group of industry leading companies, today announced its formation to promote the value of digital watermarking to content owners, industry, policy makers and consumers.
With movies, music and photos increasingly being distributed and shared digitally across numerous mediums, and printed materials such as IDs, financial instruments and product packaging at risk to counterfeiting, fraud and theft, protecting the rights and integrity of these assets and enabling legitimate uses has become critical. At the same time, consumers are demanding instant access to entertainment content – any time, any place and in any format.
Recognizing this critical juncture in the digital revolution, the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) has been formed by leading companies to advocate for digital watermarking technology and solutions that will protect and identify content while enabling the freedom and mobility that is expected by today’s consumer.
“Digital watermarking is enjoying a steady resurgence of interest now that the media industry is finding more and more applications for it throughout the content lifecycle – from creation through to production, packaging, distribution, and consumption,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies and Editor, DRM Watch (www.drmwatch.com). “The Digital Watermarking Alliance will perform an important role in educating the industry on the wide variety of uses for digital watermarking, exchanging best practices, and generally facilitating the growth of this field whose potential is only beginning to be tapped.”
The Digital Watermarking Alliance comprises 12 companies that are successfully delivering digital watermarking solutions to various markets, including media and entertainment, state and national governments, mobile communications and other commercial markets. Member companies include: Cinea, Digimarc, GCS Research, Jura, MediaGrid, Media Sciences International, Philips Electronics, Signum, Teletrax, Thomson, Verance, and Verimatrix.
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 applications.
For more information about the Digital Watermarking Alliance, please visit: www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org
Philips introduces Video Fingerprinting Solution
2006/08/22
Eindhoven, the Netherlands –Following the success of Philips Audio Fingerprinting, the company’s Content Identification group today announced Video Fingerprinting. This technology enables content owners, and content service providers, such as operators and internet service providers to automatically identify video segments and hence ownership of material by comparing unique 'fingerprints' extracted from the video segments with fingerprints in a specially compiled database. Compared to manual monitoring methods, Video Fingerprinting allows better statistical sampling, faster response times and lower error probability. The system is capable of monitoring hundreds of video channels in parallel using a single server system.
Unlike watermarking technology whereby metadata information is embedded into the audio and/or video content, the Fingerprint technology can identify a video by extracting specific characterization parameters of a video file. Philips' Video Fingerprinting system translates these characteristic features into a bit string or fingerprint. The content can be identified by comparing fingerprints of a video file received, over a Peer 2 Peer network, with the fingerprints of previously stored original video files in the database.
The robust fingerprint extraction system is capable of dealing with severe degradations, such as low bit rate video compression, scaling, cropping and noise addition. In addition, it can recognize a video from a segment as short as 5 seconds, anywhere within the video material. The Video Fingerprint database runs on a central server and comprises an advanced proprietary fingerprint search algorithm plus a database containing video fingerprints and the metadata identification data.
Philips Video Fingerprint system can be used to filter video for legal file sharing on Peer 2 Peer networks. It can identify a copyrighted movie and then its illegal exchange can be blocked, allowing reliable control over the flow of copyrighted video content. Another use is automatic content monitoring for copyright verification. Philips Video Fingerprinting can also be used for remote triggering in broadcast chains. A specific video fingerprint could trigger local advertisements in remote head-ends at specific times during a nationally transmitted broadcast, for instance to add the local dealer’s address to the commercial.
“File sharing of all sorts of content via the Internet is tremendous popular with consumers, however unfortunately sometimes at the cost of copyright owners”, says Ronald Maandonks, CEO of Philips Content Identification. “Philips Video Fingerprinting can enable publishers to accommodate this consumer need by creating legal peer-to-peer networks that can be monitored and protected from illegally copied content”
Philips Develops Anti-Piracy Solution for Digital Cinema
2006/02/21
Digital forensic watermarking technology traces illegally copied video and audio back to the scene of the crime.
Eindhoven, The Netherlands - Philips Content Identification, a business group within Royal Philips Electronics, today announced CineFence – a revolutionary new system designed to help the movie industry in its battle against video piracy. By embedding date, time and place watermarks into the picture and sound track of digitally projected movies, CineFence allows moviemakers to trace camcorder-captured copies back to the cinema in which the illegal copying took place. Employing watermarks that are imperceptible to cinema audiences yet maintain their integrity in the copied material, CineFence complies with the forensic marking requirement of the Digital Cinema System Specification V1.0.
Illegal copying is estimated to cost the movie industry more than US$4 billion per year, with camcorder recordings made by cinema goers identified as one of the most important sources of content leakage. To help identify and control the problem the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) has made forensic anti-piracy technology a mandatory requirement in its Digital Cinema System Specification.
The forensic watermarks embedded in the picture and sound by CineFence remain detectable even when camcorder recordings are compressed into formats such as VCD, DivX, and MPEG4. The watermarking technology underlying CineFence is an enhanced version of technology that has been deployed with great success over the last three years during which time it exposed the origin of illegally copied and distributed versions of major motion pictures intended only for film award review prior to their official release.
In addition to being a valuable forensic tool for exposing and tracing illegal copying, Philips watermarking technology can also be used in applications such as broadcast and Internet monitoring, asset/media management and remote triggering.
“Philips is committed to supporting the content industry in its fight against piracy”, says Ronald Maandonks, CEO of Philips Content Identification. “We foresee that in the near future all valuable digital content will be protected by a watermark.”
Access Integrated Technologies (“AccessIT”) has announced its commercial anti-piracy identification service for studios and other owners of digital content, which is based on Philips CineFence technology. AccessIT can help these content owners to analyze pirated content in an effort to trace it back to its source release point (see www.accessitx.com).
Philips CineFence is part of an array of watermarking products commercially available from Philips Content Identification.
More information: www.philips.com/ci
Or http://www.business-sites.philips.com/contentidentification/news/hires
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 30.4 billion in 2005. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 159,200 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and silicon system solutions. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.
Teletrax Executive Nobbs provides commentary to executives at international industry conference
2006/02/14
Increasing Fragmentation a Threat to Business of Television, Advises Nobbs at Prestigious BES Expo
NEW DELHI, India, February 14, 2006 – As television channels are born, live and die at increasing speed, the multi-channel, multi-region universe is more difficult to understand than ever and will become a minefield for those who do not take action, advised Andy Nobbs, president of Teletrax, to delegates attending India’s Broadcast Engineering Society Expo 2006 (BES).
Teletrax™ is the first and only global digital video monitoring and media asset management service that provides vital broadcast television intelligence to video content providers such as entertainment companies, news organizations, TV syndicators, and the advertising industry. The Teletrax service is provided through subsidiaries of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK).
During the event, India’s leading global television industry conference, Nobbs explained to high-level broadcast executives how the accelerating rate of change in the television market is driving progressive video media companies to find ways to better analyze and measure performance.
“The digitalization and proliferation of content coupled with an increase in available delivery platforms has made the broadcast industry aware of the need to establish business intelligence systems,” said Nobbs. “Watermarking technology coupled with accurate reporting services as provided by Teletrax, helps content owners maintain control over assets, protect content and generate higher value.”
Following the session, which was joined by senior executives from the BBC, the European Broadcasting Union and Silicon Image, and was chaired by K.S. Sarma, chief executive of the Indian State broadcaster, Prasar Bharathi, Nobbs noted: “Companies that do not take immediate action to both manage and protect content in this age of dramatic change will miss out on new crucial business opportunities and risk being at a competitive disadvantage.”
