It is used by streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu etc., to allow authorized users to view media while preventing them from creating unauthorized copies.

[1] The company, founded by executive Brian Baker and cryptography researcher Jeremy Horwitz, changed its name to Widevine Technologies.

[7] That same year, Widevine Technologies partnered with Taiwanese telecommunications company Chunghwa Telecom in an effort to secure their video-on-demand service.

[9] Widevine Technologies branched out into digital watermarking in 2005, partnering with content processing company TVN Entertainment (now Vubiquity) for its Mensor system.

[11] In April 2006, Constellation Ventures, Pacesetter Capital, Phoenix Capital Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners joined digital communications company Cisco Systems and Canadian telecommunications company Telus to invest $16 million into Widevine Technologies.

[13] On August 3, 2007, Widevine Technologies filed a patent infringement lawsuit against content security company Verimatrix.

In August 2008, CinemaNow used Widevine to expand its reach to multiple devices, including the Nintendo Wii, disc players from LG and Samsung, and the iPhone and iPod.

[17] Widevine was also implemented into several streaming services using Adobe Flash, including content from Sony and Warner Bros. distributed in the virtual social network Gaia Online.

For example, ARM Cortex-A processors implement TrustZone technology, allowing cryptography and video processing to occur entirely within the TEE.

In Widevine L2, media decryption and processing occurs in software or dedicated video hardware, despite the presence of a TEE, and content is available in a fixed resolution.

In Widevine L3, media decryption and processing occurs in software and no TEE is present, and content is available in a fixed resolution.

[27] This is implemented in Qualcomm chips, where an OpenMAX (OMX) component communicates with the video driver at the kernel level.

[30] In addition, Widevine supports the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol, developed by Apple Inc. in 2009.

[40] Similarly, the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) version used on the client device may be enforced by the proxy server.

During provisioning, the CDM creates a nonce and derives keys for certificate decryption and integrity checks, as well as dynamically generated buffers.

The key control block ensures data path security requirements on clients such as Android, where video and audio are encrypted separately, and to provide a timeout value to the TEE.

The block is AES-128-CBC encrypted with a random initialization vector (IV), and the fields are defined in big-endian byte order.

[30] Streaming services utilizing Widevine include Netflix, Disney+,[51] Amazon Prime Video, Max, Hulu, Paramount+, and Discovery+.

[64] In 2019, a developer tried to bundle Widevine in an Electron/Chromium-based application for video playing and did not get any response from Google after asking for a license agreement, effectively blocking DRM usage in the project.