Civolution, the leading provider of technology and solutions for identifying, managing and monetizing content and the European streaming service Wuaki.tv, part of Rakuten Group, the world’s third largest e-commerce company, today announced the integration and deployment of Civolution’s content protection technology NexGuard™, which is enabling Wuaki.tv to roll out session-based watermarking for Ultra HD movies.
The Wuaki.tv platform aims to become Europe’s best way of experiencing high quality entertainment directly on a computer, Smart TV, tablet or game console. The next stage of this process is to offer Ultra HD content to its customers, providing a cinematic experience in the home. To do so, Wuaki.tv has recently launched its Ultra HD offering of Hollywood blockbusters on LG TV sets in Germany and France.
“While acquiring high quality content, it’s become clear to us that session-based watermarking is increasingly mandatory, particularly for Ultra HD/4K content,” said Jordi Miró, CTO of Wuaki.tv. “By integrating Civolution’s forensic watermarking solution, we comply with the latest Hollywood requirements for content protection so that we can bring the best possible cinematic experience into the home. The entire integration process of the Civolution NexGuard™ technology was completed in only a few weeks and fitted seamlessly with our HEVC/DASH platform. By working with the world leader in watermarking-based content protection, we can now provide the best content catalogue possible while ensuring that illegal re-streaming can be addressed immediately.”
To ensure that this experience complies with Hollywood’s MovieLabs Next Generation Video and Enhanced Content Protection requirements, Wuaki.tv has integrated Civolution’s NexGuard™ Forensic Watermarking. This enables Wuaki.tv to identify the source of pirated copies. This increased security enables it to offer high quality content including Ultra HD movies in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as future-proof its offering ahead of expansion into new markets.
Whenever Ultra HD content is accessed or distributed, NexGuard™ embeds in real-time an imperceptible and robust watermark into the video signal. This feature is critical for tracing illegal re-distribution all the way back to the original source.
“As we move deeper into the TV Everywhere age, Ultra HD is becoming a differentiating point for many OTT providers,” said Alex Terpstra, CEO, Civolution. “At the same time, piracy continues to evolve alongside advancements in high value content delivery. Our NexGuard forensic watermarking solution helps service providers to combat piracy and to adhere to Hollywood studio requirements."
