Conax Conditional Access integrates Thomson's NexGuard watermarking and tracking solution

Conax AS, a leading supplier of state-of-the-art conditional access solutions for digital TV, today announced that they will integrate Thomson’s watermarking solution, NexGuard, into their security products.

Conax offers content protection to digital-TV operators in over 70 countries. Conax’s partnership relations within the total digital-TV value chain result in products of high quality and offer the customers the freedom to choose among the best technology providers for Digital-TV broadcasting worldwide.

A sophisticated tool to protect content owner’s premium products and revenue streams, Thomson’s NexGuard solution can watermark all forms of broadcast content delivered via IPTV, satellite, cable or terrestrial broadcast and viewed with a digital set-top box.

The NexGuard watermarking solution embeds invisible information identifying the source of television broadcast content into the video image. NexGuard’s detection and recovery system extracts this information from illicitly redistributed materials to pinpoint the source of the leak. It is the only solution that supports next generation compression in any digital set-top box without an extra pre-processing operation, because all processing is performed within the set-top box.

Thomson’s NexGuard integrated within Conax’s Conditional Access System allows operators to secure content against piracy and deter illegal copying and distribution of broadcast content.

“Thomson strongly believes in the integration of content protection with watermarking solutions” said Pascal Marie, Thomson’s NexGuard product line manager. “Combined, these security tools are not only allowing the tracking of pirated content, but more globally, they are protecting content owners’ valuable rights”.

“Thomson is pleased to offer its solution via worldwide digital TV CAS provider, Conax, protecting the consumer experience, revenues of creators and integrity of distribution channels” added Marie.

“In large markets where the redistribution of analog content is a severe problem, our customers will now be able to trace the source of the illegal distribution in a cost-effective way”, says Wictor Nicolaysen, VP Strategic Partner Management at Conax. “Piracy will always be a threat to the entertainment industry and the watermarking technology is crucial in this continuous fight. A complete integrated security measure at all system levels is required for complex Pay-TV operations, and Thomson is dedicated to providing the most robust, comprehensive anti-piracy solutions to the worldwide motion picture and broadcast industries”.

Links: Thomson; Conax