Optimized digital watermarking functions for streaming data

A digital watermark detector comprises a memory buffer for receiving an incoming stream of data. The detector includes a registration module for determining registration of embedded data in blocks of the incoming stream of data, and logic for re-using the registration for subsequent blocks of the incoming stream of data to detect machine readable signals. Another digital watermark detector comprises a message reader for extracting message estimates from blocks of media signal data and a decoder for combining the extracted message estimates and decoding a message from the combined message elements. Another digital watermark detector comprises a memory buffer and pipelined watermark processor segments. The segments each perform a different watermark detector operation. These segments concurrently operate on different data segments of the block of data in a processing pipeline.