Civolution and ATEME Join Forces to Enable Early Window Content in PayTV

PARIS & EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ATEME, the world-leading provider of video compression solutions, and Civolution, the leading provider of technology and solutions for identifying, managing and monetizing media content, today announced that they have partnered to offer a unique solution for protecting premium VOD content while streamlining operational workflows.

The two companies have integrated Civolution’s NexGuard - PayTV & Online watermarking technology with KFE, ATEME’s multi-format file-based transcoder, creating a solution which allows content owners to confidently offer premium content - such as high definition movies - in an early‐release window to PayTV operators.

“This is a major technological advancement but also a crucial commercial move for the PayTV industry’’, said Wim Bus, Senior Vice President Product Management at Civolution. ‘’The combination of streamlined workflow processes and robust piracy deterrence tools for premium content means that satellite, cable and IPTV operators, video web services and e-tailers on the one hand and content owners on the other can collaborate to now offer movies in earlier release windows. This solution, which is already being deployed, has significant revenue potential as a new business avenue for the platform operators and content creators’’.

The PayTV industry has recognized early-release HD as a promising source of new income. However, the content industry has been reluctant to grant early access as ‘pirates’ could exploit the ‘analogue hole’ that exists after decryption and before the video is displayed. The Civolution-ATEME solution addresses this issue by embedding a watermark during the encoding and then adding a second, unique watermark when the content is accessed by each individual consumer, providing a powerful deterrence against piracy.

“Just producing content is not enough to fuel the growth of PayTV Operators’ multi-screen strategy, said Rémi Beaudouin, Converged Media Product Marketing Manager at ATEME. “Operators have to offer best-of-breed content to their subscribers, but in the meantime keep production workflow costs under control. The integration of Civolution watermarking in ATEME’s KFE allows mass production of high quality video which is also automatically protected all in one process, which offers operational expenditure reduction’’.

Civolution and ATEME will be exhibiting at IBC 2010, Amsterdam, September 10-14^th.
ATEME: Hall 1 Stand D.70, Civolution: Hall 2 Stand C.28

About Civolution
Civolution (www.civolution.com) is the leading provider of technology and solutions for identifying, managing and monetizing media content.

About ATEME
ATEME (www.ateme.com) is a world-leading provider of video compression solutions. ATEME’s renowned technology supports Mobile, SD and HD content, deployed across any platform.