SmarDTV Global has announced a watermarking solution available on Conditional Access Modules (CAM) in collaboration with NAGRA, a Kudelski Group company and independent provider of content protection and multiscreen television solutions.

Watermarking solutions are a strong demand for pay-TV operators to protect the high-value contents, including live sports events and 4K contents distributed over their devices portfolio. NAGRA and SmarDTV Global have teamed up to offer a solution which is now available on CAM to provide the highest degree of assurance to content owners.

The joint solution is based on a two-step watermarking process, first with the video pre-processing step done by the NAGRA NexGuard PayTV-C watermarking technology integrated into the encoder, and then with the post-processing step done by a lightweight PayTV-C client running into the SmarDTV Module. This two-step approach is the most efficient solution in broadcast workflows, providing several key advantages, like a low bandwidth overhead for watermarked content, no additional latency on signalization and the perfect balance of processing being done by the encoder and by the Module.

Jean-Philippe Plantevin, Vice-President NAGRA Anti-Piracy, said: “Tracing illicit content activity is a necessary and critical first step in fighting today’s greatest piracy challenges, such as the illegal re-distribution of live sports. NAGRA is pleased to collaborate with SmarDTV Global to provide a solution working on legacy CI Plus TV & Consumer CI Plus modules.”

“SmarDTV Global has been at the forefront of the Conditional Access Module deployment with the focus to pro-actively support Pay-TV operators’ business and content owners”, said Hervé Mathieu, SmarDTV Global COO. “With more than 10 million CI Plus Modules deployed over the last decade, it is a natural step forward to enrich our products with a state-of-the-art watermarking technology”.

Categories: Articles, CA/DRM