NAGRA Launches NexGuard QuickMark Watermarking Solution To Combat Piracy Of Premium Live Sports

NAGRA has announced the launch of NexGuard QuickMark, its watermarking solution designed to combat live sports piracy on open devices.

Cheseaux, Switzerland(10 Sep 2018)

NAGRA, a Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S) company and the world's leading independent provider of content protection and multiscreen television solutions, today announced the launch of NexGuard QuickMark, a subscriber-level watermarking solution to fight piracy of premium live sports on open devices.

While premium live sports are a key growth driver for legitimate pay-TV service providers, they are also a fast-growing target for pirates who are starting to use open client devices, such as laptops and tablets, as a video source for their pirate services. In this new and growing piracy environment, legitimate service providers require effective anti-piracy solutions and tools, and subscriber-level watermarking is recognized as highly effective, when combined with a secure player.

“The key to combatting OTT piracy of live sport events is to identify its source and shut it down quickly,” said Harrie Tholen, VP of Sales, NAGRA Anti-Piracy & NexGuard NAGRA. “NexGuard QuickMark is a watermarking solution for open client devices, that, when combined with a secure player, gives service providers and content owners the ability to detect which subscriber is re-streaming their live sports event and put a stop to it in real-time. It’s a must-have in their anti-piracy toolset.” 

NexGuard QuickMark complements the existing NexGuard watermarking solution for set-top-boxes and is part of NAGRA’s suite of anti-piracy services. Its detection capabilities enable near real-time identification of the subscriber at the source of the piracy and the appropriate action to stop it. Using state-of-the-art content identification technologies such as real-time fingerprinting, NAGRA can capture pirate streams from the internet, social media and illicit streaming devices, and feed them into the QuickMark detection platform via an automated interface. As a dynamic client-side solution, NexGuard QuickMark does not require any modifications to the encoding, DRM or CDN systems.

NexGuard QuickMark enables a highly secure and robust implementation. It is integrated with the NAGRA OpenTV Player, a secure player for the delivery of premium content services on open client devices, and other third-party players. NexGuard QuickMark will be available to premium sports service providers in late 2018.

NAGRA Anti-Piracy Services, NexGuard watermarking and content value protection solutions will be on display on NAGRA stand, 1.C81, at IBC 2018 in Amsterdam, from September 14-18, 2018. For more information on NAGRA’s IBC presence, please visit dtv.nagra.com/ibc.