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Thomson Offers Renewable Options To Protect Valuable Hollywood Content
CES Demonstration Of Extended Conditional Access Method For Digital Television Easily Dodges Hacker's Bullet
With Hollywood studios looking for the latest in digital content protection techniques, Thomson Multimedia (NYSE: TMS) publicly demonstrated at CES 2000 an innovative, smart card based system that provides protection from computer hackers in the digital era and easy renewability. The system is called Extended Conditional Access (XCA). ""Consumers are looking forward to the day they can record the pristine digital television signals sent by local broadcasters, satellite programmers, and premium movie services. But at the same time, Hollywood studios are looking to lawfully manage the distribution of digital content so that digital technology does not run rampant over intellectual property rights. The XCA system lets the copyright owner manage content without the need to deactivate millions of consumer products when hackers break a secret code,"" said Ed Milbourn, Product Manager for Advanced Television Systems at Thomson. Norwegian computer hackers recently demonstrated the discovery of content keys designed to prevent copy of digital videodiscs, an unfortunate incident that highlights the need for a flexible and renewable system of copy management, according to Milbourn. Designed to insure ease of use for the everyday consumer, XCA utilizes the same type of smart card technology that today protects satellite broadcasts from pilferage by video pirates. At a public demonstration of the new technology at the International Consumer Electronics Show last week, Thomson showed the simple integration of a conditional access smart card in an HDTV set. In the demonstration, an XCA-encrypted digital videotape was sent to an HDTV set. The signal was modulated to Channel 3 (just like today's VCR tapes), received by the television's digital TV tuner, de-scrambled by the XCA smart card in the HDTV set, and displayed in high-definition TV. The technology for this sort of smart card de-scrambling is readily available and easily renewable. The XCA system allows for content protection of home recordings on both one-way and two-way interfaces and uses a renewable security system. XCA is easily and inexpensively implemented for all digital interfaces (such as the IEEE 1394 Interface and the EIA-762 and EIA-761 RF Remodulator Standards) that will be used between digital TV sets and other digital devices, including digital VCRs, DVD players, digital satellite, Internet boxes, cable TV equipment and computers. The XCA method avoids complex two-way key exchange schemes and allows for simple one-way copy protection across any digital interface. The XCA proposal also eliminates the need for embedded software secrets in all digital consumer devices that could someday be ""hacked."" Another major problem with the other proposals is that they are interface-specific. Manufacturers would be required to support different copy protection solutions if they choose to implement different digital interfaces. This is likely not acceptable to the consumer electronics industry as it introduces unnecessary complexity to digital product design and manufacturing, resulting in a cost increase. With XCA, manufacturers would not be required to build overly complex software into consumer devices. Some copy protection schemes proposed by others permit disabling a TV or VCR. Consumers would then be forced to determine what led to the deactivation, and how to restore the product's usefulness. ""The beauty of XCA is its simplicity. It is easily renewable with a simple smart card, much like current digital satellite receiving systems. And our method would keep pirates at bay in the digital environment."" Thomson's Milbourn said. About Thomson Multimedia With sales over $6 billion in 1998 and 48,000 employees in over 30 countries, Thomson Multimedia (NYSE: TMS) is the fourth largest global supplier of consumer electronics products. The group has four main activities: Displays and Components, Consumer Products, New Media Services, Patents and Licensing. Within its activities Thomson Multimedia develops, manufactures and sells television displays and components, consumer products such as televisions, VCRs, camcorders, audio and communications products, digital decoders, DVD players and professional video equipment. Thomson Multimedia is the parent company of the U.S.-based Thomson Consumer Electronics, Inc.