Widevine Secures Digital Media Delivery and Playback on Archos Portable Video Players

Protects motion pictures, episodic TV and music delivery for video service providers and content owners

LONDON — Widevine® Technologies, the only provider of multiformat, multiplatform content protection today announced it now secures motion pictures, episodic TV and music on Archos’ line of portable video players and WiFi digital video recorders. Demonstrated this week at IPTV World Forum in London, the joint solution enables entertainment service providers to confidently deliver premium content to the Archos devices, while ensuring content is protected and cannot be shared.

Archos’ line of award-winning portable video players offers consumers the highest resolution video playback on any portable player, along with video recording, music playback, photo viewing, gaming and other multimedia options. The Archos line of portable players and new Archos TV+ WiFi DVR can be personalized with multiple plug-ins for additional video formats that allow for movie playback, video podcasts and streamed media. Widevine’s DRM integrates tightly with the embedded Opera Web browser, which is used for accessing streaming audio and video from the Web to Archos portable players.

Widevine’s multiplatform, multiformat DRM secures delivery, storage and play-back of content on a wide range of consumer platforms. An additional level of post-decryption digital copy protection further monitors, detects and responds to the hundreds of screen scraping and recording utilities available on the Internet today. Many of these utilities can record content from a consumer device and store it as a downloadable file on the Internet. Increasingly, content owners are demanding this level of protection to prevent widespread piracy. Widevine first deployed the PC client to secure content delivered on a wide range of PC devices in 2000.

“Widevine is pleased to extend the universe of available consumer devices that major studios, broadcasters and service providers can leverage in their quest to capture eyeballs,” said Matt Cannard, Widevine’s Vice President of Marketing. “Archos has reset consumer expectations with innovative new products–including Wifi capabilities–that, when appropriately secured, open the universe of portable digital media consumption to the masses, while keeping content owner revenues intact.”

“Archos devices provide not only the highest quality video and music experience for consumers, but also Web access for enjoying streaming TV shows, radio stations, podcasts and other protected content wherever consumers go,” said Henri Crohas, Archos founder and CEO. “Our relationship with Widevine ensures that consumers can access protected media streamed to our devices–whether on their commute to work or streaming from the Web in their living room. As the growth of IPTV and online video grows, so does the need to protect content rights and ensure a high quality consumer experience. Archos and Widevine are focused and delivering on both.”

While traditional DRM technologies restrict content purchase and usage to specific devices, video formats and online services, Widevine opens DRM interoperability to all platforms, networks and video devices.