Widevine Technologies, which designs technology to prevent digital video theft, on April 19 said it had received $16 million from several investors, including network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc.
The privately held company's encryption technology scrambles digital video signals as they leave a service provider's main office, and decrypts them once they enter consumers' homes via television set-top boxes. "This gives Cisco pretty much a ground-floor opportunity to use Widevine's technology in some of their future home devices," said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst at ABI Research in New York.