Digital Watermarking Alliance Reports New Options for Deploying Digital Watermarking,...

Digital Watermarking Alliance Reports New Options for Deploying Digital
Watermarking, and Increased Adoption across the Media Landscape

LAS VEGAS, April 10 /PRNewswire/ -- 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.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080410/NETH034LOGO )
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 2012(1) "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(TM)
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(R) 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
http://www.teletrax.tv/index.php/News/Teletrax/ for more information.

-- Thomson recently announced that Moovyplay has selected NexGuard(TM),
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:
(Due to length of URL, please copy and paste into browser)
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.

About Digital Watermarking
Digital watermarking is the process by which identifying data is woven
into media content, giving it a unique, digital identity. Imperceptible to the
human senses yet easily recognized by special software detectors, a digital
watermark remains constant even through recording, manipulation and editing,
compression and decompression, encryption, decryption and broadcast -- without
affecting the quality of the content. Digital watermarks can identify
copyrighted content and associated rights, during and after distribution, to
determine copyright ownership and enable rights management policy while
enabling innovative new content distribution and usage models. Today, 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
CONTACT: For media inquiries, please contact John Raffetto
(Tel: (206) 264-1555; E-mail: john@rhstrategic.com)
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 AquaMobile, Cinea, Inc., a Dolby company
(NYSE: DLB), DataMark Technologies, Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC), GCS Research,
Gibson, ISAN-IA, Jura, MarkAny, MediaGrid, Media Sciences International,
Philips Electronics, Signum, Teletrax (Nasdaq: MDLK), The Nielsen Company,
Thomson (Euronext 18453; NYSE: TMS), Universite Catholique de Louvain,
Verance, Verimatrix, and Widevine Technologies. For more information, please
visit http://www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org
(1) Beyond Traditional DRM: Moving to Digital Watermarking &
Fingerprinting in Media Monetization" published by MultiMedia
Intelligence, January, 2008.
SOURCE Digital Watermarking Alliance

John Raffetto of Digital Watermarking Alliance, +1-206-264-1555,
john@rhstrategic.com