Medialive's technology is a clever integration of DRM and watermarking -- two technologies whose synergies have been conceptually understood for years but rarely brought to market.  The failed Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) standard of 1999-2000 was to incorporate both watermarking and DRM.  Watermarking is sometimes used as a backstop to DRM, as is the case with Blu-ray discs.  But in a nutshell, Medialive's m2mark technology works by choosing a small but important fraction of content to use as "sites" for transactional watermark insertion.

Sophisticated content technologies are slowly but surely making their way into the tightly controlled world of IFE, as airlines compete by offering more and more sophisticated entertainment options onboard.  We reported on an announcement two years ago by Panasonic Avionics, the largest IFE provider, and CinemaNow to provide video-on-demand services that enable transfer of content to portable devices using Windows Media DRM. 

Details of the integration of Medialive's technologies with France Vision Services' IFE systems are as yet unspecified, but the possibilities of integrating transactional watermarking with video-on-demand and portable device transfer are intriguing.