Texas Instruments License Verance Watermarking

Texas Instruments are the latest licensee of Verance watermarking technologies, the core copy-protection scheme employed by DVD-Audio. Texas Instruments Japan will begin incorporating Verance’s patented copy protection and content management technology into their DVD-Audio digital signal processing devices.

TI Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of U.S.-based Texas Instruments Incorporated, joins other Verance licensees Acer, ESS, LSI Logic, Matsushita, MediaTek, National Semiconductor, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Winbond Electronics and Zoran. Together, these ten licensees produce integrated circuits for manufacturers of DVD-Audio players.

Verance President and CEO Bob Cerasoli said: “As the number of DSP manufacturers licensing our technology for DVD-Audio increases, the easier it will be for manufacturers of the players to create compelling products necessary to grow the DVD-Audio market. This, in turn, will give content providers the more secure path they are seeking for releasing their content to consumers in more feature-rich digital formats.” A statement that probably loses something in the translation…

The DVD-Audio specification requires all DVD-Audio and combination DVD-Audio/Video devices to include the Verance copy protection technology.