Audio Video News

Philips Electronics has thrown its weight behind "SmartRight," a digital content copy-protection technology developed by Thomson Multimedia, according to mid-December reports from Paris and Geneva. Originally called XCA, SmartRight is a smart-card–based technique that could allay Hollywood's fears about offering hit movies over the Internet or via high-definition broadcasts.

Philips joins a consortium of companies from concerned industries—media conglomerates, electronics manufacturers, and chipmakers among them—that are backing SmartRight, under consideration as an "end-to-end" copy-protection system by the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) group's Copy Protection Technology subcommittee. Finding a technology that would support limited recording rights by consumers while providing reliable copy protection for content providers has long been a holy grail for the electronics industry.

SmartRight's basic concept includes digital "flags" inserted in content data streams that will inform "authorized" equipment if and how often a copyrighted work can be copied. It also includes the use of watermarks to "plug the analog hole"—the phenomenon that strips out all copy-protection code from digital content when it is converted to analog for display. TV programs and feature films sent digitally but converted to analog could be reconverted to digital and retransmitted freely. Watermarks would help prevent this, SmartRight developers believe. Consumers with active (paid-up) accounts would be able to activate recording and playback gear with "smart cards" similar to those needed for satellite receivers.

The DVB group will host demonstrations of SmartRight at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to be held January 9–12 in Las Vegas. Technologists and lawyers will also attend a Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG) meeting in Los Angeles on January 14. The DVB's Copy Protection Technology Subcommittee will meet with representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) the next day.

Some DVB members have grumbled about the addition of "wordings and requirements" to the copy protection proposal that have "nothing to do with copy protection but are really about Hollywood business models," according to one participant. Companies backing SmartRight include Canal+ Technologies, Gemplus, Micronas, Nagravision, Pioneer, SchlumbergerSema, STMicroelectronics, and SCM Microsystems, in addition to Philips.