Irdeto buys Rovi’s BD+ to assure Hollywood of Blu-ray security

Editor ©RapidTVNews | 07-07-2011

In a bid to highlight the strategic importance of dynamic security and receive a hooray from Hollywood, software security and media technology provider Irdeto has acquired BD+ technology for Blu-ray from Rovi Corporation.

The newly acquired BD+ technology will be added within Irdeto’s ActiveCloak for Media offering and will, says the security company, set out to offer Hollywood studios a more robust solution for protecting high-value Blu-ray movie titles from the very real and very ongoing threat of digital piracy across online, broadcast and physical media distribution channels.

Indeed in his recent inaugural speech, Chris Dodd, President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), underscored the severity of the situation by stating piracy is the “single biggest threat we face as an industry.”

The BD+ standard is based on the Self-Protecting Digital Content (SPDC) architecture and Irdeto says that it will enhance the effectiveness of BD+ by creating a hybrid BD+/ActiveCloak content security system that will monitor and address threats throughout each Blu-ray disc’s economic life.

There are huge potential business implications for doing so.

Commented Yoav Schreiber, senior analyst at Current Analysis: “Enhancing the protection of Blu-ray content is a linchpin to extending the release windows for movie titles on physical media formats. With premium VOD and online content distribution encroaching on established physical distribution models, this agreement should bolster the movie industry’s Blu-ray business model by adding Irdeto’s dynamic security to BD+ technology.”

By integrating BD+ intellectual property, contracts, and patent licenses into its current offering, Irdeto is adamant that customers—that is Hollywood—will be able to implement more robust security measures for Blu-ray than the current Advanced Access Content System (AACS), which it asserts has suffered from a history of security breaches and hacks.

“This acquisition further proves our commitment to establishing dynamic security as the industry standard for Hollywood studios taking advantage of the Media 3.0 opportunity - consumer demand for content anywhere, on any device and at any time,” explained Graham Kill, Irdeto CEO. “We are working closely with the studio community to ensure that movie titles released on Blu-ray disc have the same rigorous protection standards we created for Irdeto ActiveCloak for Media. This is the beginning of a new era of software security, and one that is certainly welcome for companies whose livelihood depends on digital entertainment.”