NDS, a News Corporation company and leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV and STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), the leading supplier of digital set top box chips, have announced the joint development of an SVP-compliant content protection solution.

One of the significant issues content providers face in the digital age is the illegal use, distribution and redistribution of content. Content owners and service providers thus need to secure their investment through content protection mechanisms while also understanding the consumers' desire to share content throughout their domain.

NDS Group vice president consumer devices Jas Saini, said: "Content owners need to know that their content is securely protected within the digital domain across multiple platforms and CE devices. The endorsement of a leading content security provider and a semiconductor developer begins the compelling argument to drive the SVP standard and make it a first, strong choice for content protection".
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Cost effective protection achieved by adding SVP security to any digital video processing device, ensures that digital content transferred outside of the SVP device itself is always in an encrypted form in a wide range of compliant devices such as digital TVs, set-top boxes, DVRs, mobile phones and other portable players.

"Adoption of SVP within our products means we can greatly increase the level of security we offer our customers", said ST's Set-top Box Division General Manager Christos Lagomichos.

SVP is widely supported as an open standard for content protection and is available under license to other partners and vendors.