We’re returning to the HPA Tech Retreat 2026 in Rancho Mirage, CA, from 15–19 February.
HPA Tech Retreat is a premier event for the media and entertainment technology community, bringing together innovators from across the globe to exchange ideas and explore cutting-edge solutions. This year’s program promises in-depth discussions on the technologies shaping the future of content creation, security, and distribution.
We’re excited to once again be selected for the Innovation Zone, where we’ll showcase our latest advancements in content security. This curated space gives attendees hands-on access to breakthrough technologies transforming the industry, and we’re proud to present exclusive demos of our newest solutions.
Members of our team, including James Hynard, Business Development Manager for Content Distribution and Security, and Bryan Madill, Solutions Architect, will be on-site to demonstrate real-world use cases of our content security innovations.
Highlights of our showcase
As content production and localization pipelines become increasingly distributed, studios face unprecedented exposure to leaks across global workflows. STARDUSTmark, our studio-grade leak detection, addresses this challenge with next-generation, single-frame forensic watermarking designed for real-world, high-risk environments.
Powered by our new extraction engine, STARDUSTmark delivers twice the robustness of its predecessor under degraded conditions such as cropping, re-encoding, resizing, and extreme compression. This ensures accurate user identification even when content has been visually transformed beyond recognition.
Optimized for today’s end-to-end studio operations, our technology safeguards subtitled and dubbed masters, internal distribution copies, and pre-release assets across every stage of localization, review, and delivery. Each frame carries a unique, imperceptible identifier, enabling traceable leak detection from a single frame, even after complex workflow transformations.
The enhanced embedding pipeline preserves exceptional visual fidelity while enabling fast, scalable watermark application and extraction. Extensive performance testing across resolutions from CIF to 4K confirms significant improvements in detection accuracy and resilience – even remaining effective with as little as 3% of the original image under certain conditions.
With STARDUSTmark, we redefine the reliability of forensic watermarking for global content workflows. Studios can maintain content security, accountability, and trust without disrupting creative or operational efficiency.
Fortium will join us at our booth to showcase STARDUSTmark on FortiumOne, a new platform launching in 2026 that enables Forensic Encryption for secure, traceable media protection across global M&E operations.
STARDUSTmark offers the cutting-edge protection and scalability you need to keep your content and workflows safe.
Start your day with a chat
Tech Retreat Breakfast Roundtables are a long-standing HPA tradition: expert-led, small-group discussions held daily over breakfast. These informal and interactive sessions allow attendees to dive deep into timely topics, exchange perspectives, and connect with industry peers.
This year, we’ll be hosting roundtables on Tuesday and Wednesday, led by James Hynard, focusing on innovations in forensic watermarking and the fight against leaks during production.
A new framing of forensic watermarking in Hollywood
🗓️ Tuesday, 17 Feb & Wednesday, 18 Feb
⏰ 07:30-08:30
James Hynard – Business Development Manager for Content Distribution and Security
Join us there
We’d love to see you at HPA Tech Retreat 2026. Don’t miss the opportunity to connect with our team and experience our latest innovations firsthand.
Book your meeting
Spots fill quickly! Reserve your time now to connect with our experts and see our tech in action.