Us based Verimatrix to open office in India

BEIJING: After winning the confidence of major Hollywood studios, Verimatrix, the top US-based content security technology provider for pay-TV networks, is getting ready to woo India's Bollywood, a senior company official said.

"We have identified India as one of the most potential market for pay-TV networks and plans to open an office either in Mumbai or New Delhi within the fourth quarter of 2007," Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Verimatrix, Steve Oetegenn told media.

Verimatrix has already initiated talks with a few Indian pay-TV networks in Mumbai and is hoping to woo the Bollywood studios to allow Hindi movies to be shown on secured networks as Hollywood movies are broadcast over IPTV networks in countries like the United States, he said.

"The company's content security experts maintain close relationships with the major Hollywood studios to help address the challenges facing pay-TV networks of today, and those of tomorrow," he said. "We are ready to assure Bollywood studios that it can provide 100 per cent content security, which is a real issue for IPTV operators all over the world due to piracy, especially in Asia," he said.

Oetegenn was in Beijing to receive the InfoVision Award in the category of Content, Entertainment, Applications, and Services at the Broadband World Forum.

Verimatrix was rewarded for its Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for IPTV 2.0, which offers telecommunications carriers, content aggregators and resellers the high integrity content security they require in their IP networks to offer a full range of live broadcast and premium Video-on-Demand IPTV services.

VCAS for IPTV was the only content security solution that was named as a finalist in any category for this prestigious industry award, he said.

Verimatrix has also won its first industry award in China at the "IPTV in China" Summit Forum. Verimatrix's Video Content Authority System (VCAS) was awarded the "China Outstanding IPTV Solution Award" in the content protection solution category, he said.

VCAS for IPTV is a software-based content security solution that eliminates the vulnerabilities related to smartcard-based architectures through the leverage of mature, proven two-way Internet security protocols, he said.

Further, the company has developed digital certificates and user-specific forensic digital watermarking to combat rogue set-top boxes. A downloadable security system for IPTV clients is not only more secure, it enables less expensive set-top box (STB) hardware and software and can be updated or renewed as required to combat the pirates attacks, he said.