Advanced Digital Broadcast said it can now integrate watermarking capabilities in its set-top boxes through a deal with Civolution, a year-old spin-off from Philips. The company purchased its VTrack watermarking technology from Thomson STS.

In the last year or so, watermarking has been gaining increasing prominence as a means of controlling content. The technique is not aimed at preventing content theft; rather, once stolen content is retrieved, watermarking makes it easy to identify the source of the theft.

Coupled with the proliferation of HD content, that explains the attraction of integrating watermarking in individual set-tops. Broadcom, for example, is integrating watermarking technology directly into its designs for ICs that make up the guts of several set-top box brands. ADB’s work with Civolution is another instance in this growing trend.

“ADB is proud to be one of the first set-top box companies to integrate such a solution onto its products,” said Francois Pogodalla, CEO of ADB. “Considering the development of home networking, which enables content to flow freely between multiple consumer devices, ADB believes that the industry will welcome our efforts to offer an extra layer of content protection, in addition to today’s conditional access solutions.”

Alex Terpstra, CEO of Civolution, said, “Now with the increased availability of high-definition and early release content, the [camera] capture and distribution of high-quality content copies is a new threat requiring fast, efficient and cost-effective solutions.”

ADB’s set-tops equipped with Civolution’s watermarking will be able to embed a unique watermark into on-demand content. ADB says the VTrack watermark will survive camcorder capture and subsequent degradation of the content through Internet usage.