Video Breakthroughs

During ANGA, Civolution is demonstrating the latest advances in its NexGuard suite of forensic watermarking solutions, which provide both a deterrent against piracy and a forensic analysis tool in case piracy occurs. The product meets requirements for the additional security measures required to offer early-release premium VOD (PVOD). The Hollywood studios are demanding that operators need to integrate transactional watermarking protection into their VOD workflow and network infrastructure to get access to PVOD titles, as it allows for forensic tracking to the source of potential illegal copies.

Civolution announces that it will be demonstrating its new real-time content triggering service at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The new service enables synchronized ad delivery to second screen applications by leveraging Civolution’s extensive broadcast monitoring infrastructure of more than 1,700 TV channels worldwide, of which more than 1,250 are national and local channels in North America covering all 210 Designated Market Areas.

The new content-triggering service complements Civolution’s award-winning SyncNow - 2nd screen synchronization solution. Upon client-based identification through audio watermarking or fingerprinting, the SyncNow product enables identification and synchronization between broadcast, on-demand or recorded television content and interactive applications on devices such as a tablets, smartphones or laptops. Additionally, Civolution is providing automatic content recognition technology for integration with smart TVs, enabling all the value-adding opportunities of SyncNow on the larger main screen of the TV set itself.

Audio watermarking is the only approach to content identification that gives broadcasters independence from service providers and full control over what happens to their content when it comes to second screen synchronisation. That is the view of Alex Terpstra, CEO at Civolution, whose ‘VideoSync - 2nd Screen’ solution uses audio watermarks in the programme feed that tablets or smartphones can ‘hear’ across a room in order to trigger events or functions within an application they are running. The watermarks can provide channel ID, programme ID and frame-accurate time codes to enable the synchronisation.

Synchronisation between what is playing on TV and what consumers do on their tablets is likely to create major new opportunities for broadcasters in terms of viewer engagement and advertising. The second screen represents green-field inventory for interactive TV and interactive advertising and we can expect a fight for control of that real-estate over the next couple of years. There are plenty of third-party app providers who want to build communities around social TV functions or special interest publishing content and ‘piggy-back’ those services onto broadcaster shows. Broadcasters will need to ensure they have their own programme-specific or channel-related second screen apps if they want to ‘own’ the viewer on both screens simultaneously.