IPTV Causing Hollywood Nightmares

Hollywood is fretting over IPTV. Not because of the competition that it will generate, but because of the nightmares that stem from security. The movie industry is gearing up for a battle against piracy much like the recording industry faced a few years back.

As the use of IPTV moves into the mainstream, Hollywood studios are looking for ways to protect their content. The internet has always been a haven for pirates, hackers, and scammers and the industry experts don’t expect that will change as people begin downloading movies using IPTV.

Verimatrix may be the answer that studios need to protect IPTV content. This San Diego based company has been working to develop content security software and forensic watermarking for video delivered over the internet.

The focus of the development has been a product that will encrypt movies and even television shows before they are sent out over the internet. The content then unscrambles when it reaches the set-top box of paid subscribers.

The watermarking technology embeds a code into the video that is invisible to viewers, but it allows pirated material to be tracked back to the set-top box where it originated.

IPTV is just one more concern that Hollywood faces in the future. It must find a way to work in the system or risk the system working against it.