At the recent NCTA show in San Francisco the Secure Video Processor (SVP) Alliance announced that eight new companies have joined the content protection group, bringing the total to 22 and further strengthening the organization’s influence in the important realm of digital content protection. The eight new members include AMD, Amstrad, Philips Electronics, Cablevision, Pace Micro Technology, Sky Italia, Texas Instruments, and Israeli satellite operator Yes.
The SVP initiative is particularly significant to the cable industry since it ensures the secure distribution of content throughout the cable infrastructure, paving the way for the broad delivery of valuable premium content in home network configurations, while complying with plug-and-play requirements.
Demonstrations of the SVP technology shown at NCTA, included an end-to-end integrated home networking solution, and a demo showing how content can be downloaded to a portable media player while protecting content owners’ rights using SVP.
The SVP solution, based on Secure Video Processor hardware, allows premium content to be more broadly distributed, since the technology protects it from unauthorized use.
Network operators using SVP-compliant devices, for example, can use the technology to empower consumers to receive, store and render secured content in home networks and on consumer devices — such as digital televisions, set-top boxes, DVRs, and portable media devices.
Any standard video processing chip design can be made SVP-enabled with a small amount of additional circuitry, and can then be embedded in any consumer electronics device. Consumer electronic devices using the SVP technology will be available later this year.
The Secure Video Processor (SVP) Alliance is a not-for-profit organization supported by media and technology industry leaders committed to the widespread use of digital content on consumer devices. The objective of the SVP Alliance is to adopt, use and promote the SVP standard and develop interoperability with other DRM and content protection solutions. By ensuring its broad adoption, and proposing its specification to relevant standards and other industry bodies, SVP will become a leading international standard for content protection.
For more information, visit www.svpalliance.org.
