Thomson will be unveiling its NexGuard forensic marking solution for set-top boxes at CEBIT 2007 and NAB2007. A streamlined "open architecture" solution, the NexGuard video watermarking technology will work with standard and next generation compression codecs: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and VC-1.

NexGuard for STBs has been integrated into the STx7100 family of System-on- Chips (SoC), manufactured by semiconductor supplier STMicroelectronics. It will be available to all STB companies, conditional access system (CAS) vendors, and Video-on-Demand (VOD) and push-VOD operators, summer 2007.

NexGuard's invisible STB watermark deters illegal copying and distribution of all forms of broadcast content delivered via IPTV, satellite, cable or traditional broadcast and viewed with digital STBs. It is also the only tool that supports next generation compression in any digital STB without an extra preprocessing operation, because all processing is performed within the STB.

NexGuard's watermarking technology embeds unique identification information into the STB video stream upon play-out that specifies the operator distributing the content as well as the individual STB serial number. NexGuard's detection and recovery system extracts this information from illicitly redistributed materials to pinpoint the source of the leak. The tool individually watermarks all forms of content viewed through live broadcast, Video-On-Demand (VOD), push-VOD or personal video recorder playback (PVR). The forensic mark is present on all STB video outputs; standard definition, digital high-definition multimedia interfaces (HDMI); and analog HD components.