Audio Video News

With DVD-based video recorders and disc burners for personal computers now coming on the market, a video industry coalition has announced a comprehensive watermarking technology for digital video that it hopes will prevent a copyright-infringement nightmare like the one now plaguing the music business. The Millennium Group, consisting of Philips Electronics, Macrovision, and Digimarc, claims that its system will inhibit unauthorized copying of DVDs and will prevent illegal copies from playing.

The system will apply to all DVD-based devices, including home video recorders and DVD burners for personal computers, group spokespeople stated in an announcement July 13. Copy control for digital video has been proposed and implemented previously in several forms, but the Millennium Group is taking the piracy fight a step further by introducing a technique it calls Wobbletrack, which will tell players when they are loaded with authentic discs. The group's copy-prevention system also provides for copy-once operations, if the copyright holder wishes to enable it. Where single copies are allowed, they will be encoded in such a way as to prevent copies being made from them, a technique the announcement calls "watermark re-marking."

The next generation of digital video recording devices will come with the system embedded, according to the announcement. No visible or audible degradation occurs with the watermark, the group claims, and the system is said to be robust enough to allay the entertainment industry's worst fears. "We are confident that Millennium's new proposal addresses the needs of both the hardware and the content communities," said Philips VP Gerry Wirtz. "We are offering a robust and secure watermark that will cover video formats from standard to high-definition TV . . . compatible with physical media such as DVD and videocassette and transmission methods such as terrestrial and satellite broadcast, cable, and the Internet. In addition, the Millennium proposal provides a powerful play-control feature based on our proprietary Wobbletrack technology."

The Millennium Group's watermarking system has been granted five patents in the past six months, according to Digimarc CEO Bruce Davis. The system is intended as a turnkey copyright-protection method for the entire entertainment industry, he emphasized. "We have decided to offer the new Millennium solution to the industry with patent-indemnification guarantees that we believe will be acceptable to all users," said Macrovision chairman John Ryan. "The Millennium Group is offering a complete copy-protection solution to the motion picture, CE, and PC industry that will allow consumers and the industry to benefit from the latest advances in digital video."