A media decoder and a decoding method allowing for the media decoder to be traced

摘要

The present invention aims to overcome drawbacks of conventional content tracing methods requiring re-processing the content before its broadcast with a significant side channel transmission i.e. extra processing, storage and/or bandwidth at the distribution side, or alternately a complex signal processing implementation at the receiver side that has to be protected against hackers' attacks. An efficient system and method consists of tracing and uniquely identifying decoders of a video stream wherein the decoders implement at least one variant of a standard image decompression algorithm and wherein the resulting decompressed image approximation varies according to the decoders' identifier.