NAGRA and Eluvio launch forensic watermarking for sports and events streaming

NAGRA and Eluvio Extend Collaboration with Industry-First Integration of Forensic Watermarking for Live Streaming of Sports and Live Events on the Eluvio Content Fabric

CHESEAUX-SUR-LAUSANNE, Switzerland, and BERKELEY (CA), USA — In advance of the 2024 NAB Show, NAGRA, a Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S) company and the world’s leading independent provider of content protection and media and entertainment solutions, and Content Fabric pioneer, Eluvio, today announced the commercial launch of the industry’s first integration of NAGRA NexGuard forensic watermarking for secure, just-in-time, ultra-low latency live streaming via decentralized networking using the Eluvio Content Fabric.

The new capability was designed specifically to support broadcasters and producers of live sports and premium live events to deliver ultra high-quality and low-cost live streaming while enforcing viewing rights. The solution enables end-to-end protection against piracy and allows for detecting and stopping piracy per-session at source. Today’s announcement is an extension of the innovative work the two companies jointly unveiled last year for premium on-demand video. With it, Eluvio has now integrated NAGRA NexGuard Streaming for live video, full-length premium video, and short-form clips.

The Eluvio Content Fabric is an open and decentralized, streaming, content distribution, and storage network built for the third generation Internet. The Fabric delivers live streams with deterministic end-to-end latencies under three seconds globally to standard streaming clients (DASH/HLS over HTTP) and provides a complete full-featured media stack to publish, store and deliver premium live streaming, PVOD, and FAST Channel streaming at scale, including personalization, access control, content protection and proof of engagement. Companies, artists and brands whose premium content distribution initiatives have been powered by Eluvio include: Amazon Studios/MGM Studios, Dolly Parton, FOX, Microsoft, Paramount Home Entertainment, SONY Pictures, Telstra Broadcast Services, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, WWE, and others. NAGRA NexGuard Streaming watermarking is applied in the Eluvio Content Fabric as part of an end-to-end trustless content security model and exploits the Fabric’s native, hyper efficient and low latency global streaming pipeline.

“This new forensic watermarking capability for live streams completes the Content Fabric’s trustless, verifiable, and tamper-proof content security capabilities that prove, protect, and secure live video from its source to global viewers with ease,” said Michelle Munson, co-founder and CEO of Eluvio. “The Content Fabric protocol ensures live video assets are encrypted with the latest ‘trustless’ cryptography, backed by in-protocol blockchain contracts, and managed by on-chain policy to enforce playout authorization at the source. We’re excited to have brought forensic watermarking to our just-in-time, ultra-low latency live video streaming with NAGRA. The solution is per-session, end-to-end, and scalable.”

“The growth of OTT delivery of live sports is creating new piracy threats that require greater security,” said Ken Gerstein, VP Sales, NAGRA Anti-Piracy & NexGuard. “We’re proud to continue our innovative work with Eluvio which allows for the seamless integration of our forensic watermarking solution with the Eluvio Content Fabric to ensure that action can be taken against piracy. Eluvio and NAGRA are committed to minimizing, tracing and stopping content leaks at their source for premium VOD content and now, live sports and premium live events.”

Eluvio and NAGRA at NAB 2024

At NAB 2024, Eluvio will host meetings in the Las Vegas Convention Center, West Hall Level 2 meeting room W237. Eluvio’s co-founders will demonstrate the latest Content Fabric release and applications on Sunday, April 14 and Monday, April 15 from 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. in W237 and will host various tech talks and events throughout NAB.