Server-guided watermarking for resource-constrained devices

Distribution of multimedia content to CE devices poses challenges for content owners to protect their products. Conditional access and digital rights management systems are barely sufficient against content redistribution by legal subscribers. Adding watermarking techniques allows one to trace the user would an infringement have occurred. Many CE devices, however, have insufficient processing resources to perform real-time watermarking of video or even audio content. In this paper, we discuss a scheme that enables a fast audio watermarking for multimedia broadcasting to CE devices. The proposed technique reuses existing components of conditional access system. We discuss the implementation of the technique in systems based on Digital Video Broadcasting standards.