Rovi

Facebook beefs up its entertainment pages

Facebook is beefing up its interest pages, giving the social network a better way to surface recommendations and offering advertisers a better way to target users.

The company today announced its partnership with Rovi Corp., a metadata company that will fill out the social network's already existing entertainment interest pages -- those pages you "like" if you are a fan -- and create new ones.

Metadata is a set of data that describes other data, allowing companies to easily organize or search the data. Facebook will make some of this data available to its third-party developers, which … Read more

Fred Amoroso: Is this the man behind Yahoo's patent offensive?

Fred Amoroso joined Yahoo's board of directors in February. About a month later, Yahoo unleashed a massive patent lawsuit against Facebook.

Coincidence? Probably not, since Amoroso is one of Silicon Valley's most enthusiastic proponents of patent warfare.

Until three months ago, Amoroso was president and CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Rovi. The publicly traded company--previously known as Macrovision--licenses TV show metadata and bills itself as a "global leader in digital entertainment technology solutions." But the company has also shown some skill in deriving revenue by suing other companies for alleged infringement of its substantial … Read more

Hulu accused of infringing on program guide patents

Hulu got more bad news late last week in the form of a patent infringement lawsuit.

Rovi Technologies, a provider of digital home-entertainment products, accused the online video service of infringing on three of its patents related to online TV program guides and search products in a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court of Delaware. Rovi, which was formed after Macrovision's acquisition of Gemstar-TV Guide International in 2008, seeks compensation for the alleged infringement as well as attorneys' costs and related fees.

Rovi, which licenses its patents to Apple, Microsoft, Comcast, and DirecTV, said in the lawsuit … Read more

Rovi to buy Sonic for $720 million

Rovi has agreed to acquire Sonic Solutions for $720 million in a bid to beef up its digital entertainment offerings.

With the help of Sonic's content offerings, including the DivX and Roxio products, Rovi plans to broaden its range of products and services for "content owners, device makers, retailers, and operators" in the digital entertainment market.

Specifically, the company said yesterday that it plans to combine its TotalGuide content discovery service and RoxioNow, Sonic's digital-media delivery platform, which boasts over 10,000 movies and television shows, thanks to content partnerships with Universal, Disney, 20th Century Fox, … Read more

Samsung signs deal to use Rovi's EPG

Last month, we reported that Macrovision changed its name to Rovi , and now Samsung has made a deal to use the company's electronic programming guide in its future products. According to Video Business, it's a multiyear contract, and Rovi has previously stated it doesn't expect its guide to hit the marketplace until early 2010.

We could see Rovi's EPG being useful in several types of home theater products, but the most logical place would be Samsung's HDTVs. While many already have EPG functionality through an attached cable or satellite box, Rovi's guide could be … Read more

Rovi, formerly Macrovision, announces Liquid media guide

Macrovision, best known for its digital rights management software, officially changed its name today to Rovi. To celebrate, the company announced a new media guide, code named "Liquid." According to the press release, Liquid will merge television, Internet, and personal multimedia content into a single, sleek graphical interface. Rovi plans on releasing the guide to consumer electronics manufacturers in early 2010.

The media guide is broken up into three basic areas. First off is a FiOS-like interactive guide to broadcast TV, which appears to offer extensive information and playback options. The second major component will offer broadband services … Read more