E-City nabs pirates using Thomson Watermarking tech

MUMBAI: E-City Ventures promoted E-City Digital Cinemas along with Yash Raj Films identified and took action against Chetna Cinema in Jetpur for allowing illegal camcorder recording of Dostana on its premises.

Chetna Cinema is one of the theaters to which E-City had supplied Qube Digital Cinema servers as part of its digital expansion. What the pirates did not realize was that all Qube servers in India are equipped with Hollywood standards compliant forensic watermarking software from Thomson that can be used to identify the theater from which the content has been captured using a camcorder. Executing a firm action to curb this illegal practice, E-City Digital has removed all its equipments and banned from showing any further Yash Raj Films in the single screen theater.

To protect motion picture content from in-theater piracy, all the 126 screens managed by E-City Digital have embraced the Thomson NexGuard Watermarking technology provided by Real Image into their exhibition hardware. Any video recording made from the screen image of these theatres cinema projection will consist of the watermark slate, which is inserted during the playback of a film.

E-City Digital Cinemas vice president Chandresh Daftary said, “Video piracy is the biggest threat to the film business all over the world and E-City is fully committed to curb film piracy. E-City has been using the Thomson forensic watermarking system across all its digital cinemas and feels proud that the investment in this technology has paid-off.”

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