Rumor: Cinavia developer Verance loses customers, lays off staff and refocuses

According to former employees of Verance, the company is losing customers, has laid off half its staff and is no longer staffing its Cinavia support team.  Verance will be focusing on a product called VP1 instead.

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The developer of the Cinavia audio watermark based Blu-ray copy protection, Verance, reportedly lost Warner Brothers and Fox as customers. Only Sony, Lionsgate and Universal are still using Cinavia on their releases. However, they are said to be frustrated with the technology. It's unknown whether that's because the copy protection is circumvented by several Blu-ray copy applications or because of its licensing costs, production difficulties or something else.

Also the Cinavia support team working at Verance is no longer staffed, according to the former employees who also claim Verance has laid off half its employees.

The company now has a new focus and that is VP1, our source tells us. This is a technology based on an inaudible audio watermark (like Cinavia), but VP1 is not used as copy protection. Instead it can be used to serve additional content. When e.g an internet connected TV detects the VP1 watermark it can establish a connection with a broadcaster’s server to receive frame-accurate supplemental data. According to Verance this could be used for features like, "personalized viewing, onscreen interactivity, dynamic advertising and viewing measurement".

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The news comes from a source who has talked to several former Verance employees,  as we're unable to independently verify the information we post them as rumors. Our  told us he and the employees want to remain anonymous for 'legal reasons'.

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