Mumbai: USA Video Interactive Corp. has signed a memorandum of understanding with India-based PIO TV Pvt. Ltd. (PIO TV) to deploy USVO’s SmartMark watermarking technology. PIO TV is the first digitally integrated media platform for People of Indian Origin around the world.

Following testing of USVO’s MediaSentinel digital watermarking platform, PIO TV commits to deploy USVO’s SmartMark technology to watermark and protect PIO TV’s online content distributed through its www.pioTV.com digital media platform.

PIO TV is in the process of uploading 2,000 hours of TV content and 3,000 hours of movie content (approximately 1,000 Bollywood feature films). Www.pioTV.com will derive significant entertainment content through a major content partnership with a group of very dynamic individuals, production houses, labels and banners from Bollywood, the world’s biggest entertainment industry.

“India is one of the hottest spots in the world for piracy and online media is subject to manipulative ways of piracy,” said PIO TV director and chief editor K N Gupta. To thwart piracy, PIO TV is employing USVO’s SmartMark on special content it places in its Content On Demand and Archives, to track it during distribution and protect the intellectual property of the original content owners. Embedding SmartMarks — invisible forensic information in every frame of video content — provides proof the courts need to protect intellectual property rights, indicting and convicting the individuals who steal the original material.

Last August, India’s Union Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, V Ravi, unveiled www.pioTV.com. The event was attended by representatives of nearly all large national and regional media and widely reported. Ravi said, “www.pioTV.com serves both India and the PIO community by connecting the two, whilst being a platform for the PIO community that is spread across the globe.” He also added that, “the information, culture, entertainment and lots of other functions of the platform will help keep the Indian connection and roots alive.”

Since its launch, PIO TV has become the first platform to live web telecast the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Expatriates’ Day) celebrations on 8 and 9 January from New Delhi to reach as many of the 35 million Indian Diaspora worldwide. On 18 February, PIO TV relayed the live web telecast of Mauritius Prime Minister, Naveen Raamgoolam, a PIO, who visited his forefathers’ home state Bihar in India on that day and received a state-wide felicitation. This telecast was particularly emotional for PIOs in Mauritius and those in other parts of the world that hail from Bihar.

USVO CEO Edwin Molina said, “Our relationship with PIO TV has been, and is, an opportunity for USVO to be a player overseas. As we’re moving in the domestic market, we are simultaneously moving in the global arena. With PIO TV we have a footprint for SmartMark to become established in India, one of the fastest growing multimedia regions in the world.”