Cinea's Running Marks Watermarking Technology Integrates With Broadcom Chipsets to Support Compressed Content Protection

Cinea, Inc., a subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories (NYSE:DLB), and Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM), one of the world’s largest fabless semiconductor manufacturers, announced the integration of Cinea’s Running Marks™ solution into Broadcom’s system-on-chip (SoC) decoder platform. The companies will demonstrate this integration at this week’s CableLabs®Winter Conference Innovation Showcase in Colorado Springs.

The resulting technology will be made available to all Broadcom customers with a Cinea Running Marks license, including set-top box vendors, conditional access vendors, and cable, telecommunications, and satellite system operators.

“Increasingly, our customers have been talking about how session-based watermarking could further secure their video distribution channels,” said Caspar Settels, Senior Marketing Manager of Broadcom Corporation. “By integrating this technology at the chipset level, Cinea’s Running Marks provides a forensic approach for any form of video distribution. The technology’s ability to watermark a compressed video stream is a unique feature that we believe will be of significant interest to our customers.”

Cinea’s Running Marks replacement-based architecture offers a variety of compelling advantages and efficiencies, including extensive flexibility to mark compressed content anywhere during the content distribution path as well as on delivery to a home media gateway. Running Marks’ “ultra-light” message inserter consumes very few of the computational resources of Broadcom’s decoder platform, freeing those resources for other technical uses. Additionally, system renewability on the backend, with no need for field upgrades, results in a tremendous cost savings when millions of devices have already been deployed.

At this week’s CableLabs Winter Conference Innovation Showcase, Cinea and Broadcom will demonstrate watermarking integration with a digital video recorder using the Broadcom® BCM7400 platform to simultaneously mark dual video streams in real-time. The demonstration will showcase how all resulting set-top box outputs contain the watermark, including the traditional baseband analog outputs (component, composite, and S-Video), baseband digital outputs (HDMI), and compressed digital outputs (1394, IP).

“We’ve worked with the motion picture studios for years and designed Running Marks from the beginning as an extremely robust forensic watermark that would protect high-value video content regardless of format changes, compression type, or playback device,” said Robert Schumann, General Manager of Cinea. “We’re very pleased that Broadcom has recognized the benefit of Running Marks and will provide its customers with our world-class protection scheme that has no effect on the end consumer’s video watching experience.”

Forensic watermarking, also known as serialization watermarking, enables a distinctive, session-specific ID or serial number to be placed in every video stream sent from a system operator into a home. By watermarking individual streams, the natural flow of distributed content remains uninterrupted, yet any source of illegally redistributed content can be traced back to the source. Forensic marks also provide a proactive “deterrent” value by removing the anonymity usually associated with the downloading and sharing of content.

About Cinea

Cinea, Inc., a Dolby company, develops and commercializes a broad variety of content-protection solutions for the motion picture and television industries. Current customers include many of the major film studios as well as leading service vendors in the entertainment industry. The company’s forensic watermarking technology, Running Marks, allows content owners to track pirated content to specific devices, from set-top boxes to PCs to portable video devices to mobile phones. Cinea’s executives are well-known authorities on content protection and forensic watermarking. The company is also a founding member of the Digital Watermarking Alliance. For more information about Cinea, Inc. or Cinea® technologies, please visit www.cinea.com.

Certain statements in this press release, including statements regarding the performance, features, reliability, and capabilities of Cinea’s Running Marks technology; the potential benefits that manufacturers, system operators and other users may derive from the use of this technology; the anticipated market acceptance of Running Marks; and the expected availability of Running Marks technology into Broadcom’s System-on-Chip (SoC) decoder platform are “forward-looking statements” that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations. The following important factors, without limitation, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements: risks that adoption of Running Marks may not occur as currently anticipated; risks that Running Marks may not perform as anticipated; risks associated with building market acceptance of and demand for Running Marks; competition risks for watermarking technology; rapid changes in technical requirements for antipiracy protection; and other risks detailed in Dolby's Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including the risks identified under the section captioned "Risk Factors" in its most recent Periodic Report on Form 10-Q or 10-K. Dolby disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Cinea is a registered trademark of Cinea, Inc. Running Marks is a trademark of Cinea, Inc. Broadcom is among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. CableLabs is a trademark of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. S08/19308

An equipment demonstration at a CableLabs’ event does not constitute CableLabs’ endorsement of that equipment or technology.