In conjunction with the existing Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM) inclusion of Cinavia watermarking detection support became mandatory for all consumer Blu-ray Disc players from 2012.

Cinavia's in-band signaling introduces intentional spread spectrum phase distortion in the frequency domain of each individual audio channel separately, giving a per-channel digital signal that can yield up to around 0.2 bits per second[4]—depending on the quantization level available, and the desired trade-off between the required robustness and acceptable levels of psychoacoustic perceptibility.

It is intended to survive analog distortions such as the wow and flutter and amplitude modulation from magnetic tape sound recording.

If a "theatrical release" watermark is detected in a consumer Blu-ray Disc audio track, the accompanying video is deemed to have been sourced from a "cam" recording.

Cinavia works to prevent copying via the detection of a watermark recorded into the analog audio of media such as theatrical films and Blu-ray Discs.

On 5 June 2009, the licensing agreements for AACS were finalized, which were updated to make Cinavia detection on commercial Blu-ray Disc players a requirement.

[12] On 3 July 2009, Maxim Anisiutkin published an open source DVD Audio watermark detector and neutralizer[13] computer program to the SourceForge web site.

[15][16] In August 2013, DVD-Ranger released a white paper detailing their methods for detecting, and subsequently removing, the present Cinavia signal from audio files.