VEIL Mandate Would Spell ‘Radical’ Design Changes, TI Argues

A VEIL mandate would mean “hundreds of millions of dollars” to redesign and reprogram hundreds of ADCs made by multiple companies, said the TI analysis by Randy Cole of the company’s DSP R&D Center in Dallas. Semiconductor companies “will face the additional burden of compliance and robustness requirements, added legal liability and increased IP licensing cost,” TI said. And bids to plug the analog hole at the ADC will be “ineffective,” TI said. Given the converter market’s international scope, its distribution chain is “complex,” TI said, adding that it’s “infeasible to assure that components such as converters will only be used in compliant products.” Illustrating the ease with which VEIL could be compromised, TI said a “very skilled hobbyist” could build a low-quality but effective video ADC for $25-$50 using a field-programmable gate array and a few external components.

VEIL, never tested and evaluated against competing technologies in a multi-industry forum, was only one of 10 technologies the Analog Reconversion Discussion Group considered for plugging the analog hole, TI said. VEIL licensing terms and conditions are unknown, and VEIL’s own independent lab tests put the technology’s robustness in doubt, TI said. Those tests showed “known impairments” can cut VEIL’s detection rate to 42% and that the system caused “noticeable” picture quality differences in 29% of test clips, it said.

St. Louis-based VEIL Interactive Technologies, whose VCP subsidiary licenses the system the analog hole bill would mandate, hasn’t responded to numerous queries from Consumer Electronics Daily seeking information or a response to its critics. Exec. vp Scott Miller didn’t appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but submitted written testimony in which he stood by the VEIL proposal’s sanctity.

The VEIL “rights assertion mark” (VRAM) system consists of an encoder and a detector, Miller said. The encoder inserts the VRAM signal into the viewable portion of the video, he said. The detector searches for the VRAM signal until it’s confirmed, he said. He described the VRAM signal as a non-data-carrying bit “whose presence asserts that rights should be associated with the content in the vertical blanking interval via the CGMS-A bits.”

In the same study TI cited as showing VEIL is flawed, Miller said the tests his firm commissioned “showed that in the area of robustness, the VRAM was still detectable even with the introduction of 10 different impairments that were designed specifically to strip the VRAM.” And in the test’s visibility portion, a total of 3,045 clip comparisons were seen by 46 viewers, including studio “golden-eyes,” Miller said. About 2/3 of test viewers couldn’t cite any noticeable difference between marked and unmarked clips, he said: “Of the remaining third who thought they saw something, the results concluded that the participants could have flipped a coin and achieved the same results. That is to say, they were right 50% of the time and wrong 50% of the time.” Miller said the VRAM easily surpasses CE industry tolerance benchmarks on “false detections.”

Analyzing VRAM implementation costs, a top chip maker found they would “equate” to no more than 1 cents-15 cents extra cost per device, he said: “These conclusions have been provided to a number of leading CE and IT companies for their own analysis.” He didn’t identify the chip maker, but MPAA, which has pushed VEIL in the House and Senate, has said Toshiba and IBM, both formidable semiconductor producers, endorse the system.

Learning the VEIL system does mean paying a $10,000 upfront fee and signing an NDA, Miller said. But “like many interested parties in this issue, we are a company that takes all intellectual property, including our own, very seriously,” he said. His firm is willing to “commit to Congress that we will continue to provide VRAM on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for the useful life of the application,” he said. CE makers agreeing to build VRAM detectors into hardware will be offered a royalty-free license for “unlimited use” with payment of the one-time $10,000 “administrative fee,” Miller said.