Friday, July 17, 2009

Macrovision - New Sony EPG edges closer with Rovi Liquid Debut

The company formerly known as Macrovision has said that it'll be changing its name and launching a new Media Guide that promises to revolutionise the way we choose what to watch on television in the future.

The 1st discussed back in March, the company has formally outlined planned of the once called Neon interface, chaning the name to Liquid along with the company name to Rovi.

Rovi plans to roll out its "Liquid" electronic programme guide to manufactures like Sony in the future allowing consumers the chance to connect to content found on the internet as well as digital content stored at home.

"The new media guide solution is comprised of 3 distinct, but integrated solutions: a Television Content Guide, a Broadband Content Guide and a Personal Content Guide," a spokesman for the company told Pocket-lint.


In what must be a big day for the company, it has also announced a deal with Blockbuster to integrate access to BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand content, a deal that could be tied with Samsung's announcement of a similar deal with Blockbuster earlier in the week, although that has not been confirmed by either company.

Rovi has said that it is also working with Roxio CinemaNow, Slacker radio and YouTube XL, a website that is optimized for watching YouTube videos on large displays.

The company plans to use metadata stored in every programme to store favourites and make recommendations for undiscovered content. The guide also stores user profiles, so each member of the household can retrieve a personalized guide each time he or she turns on the TV.

The Liquid guide is designed to be able to connect to social network applications, such as Flixster using data to pull in recommendations from friends and the cloud.

The Liquid guide is planned to be available for CE manufacturers in early 2010 according to Rovi, however earlier comments from the company to Pocket-lint in March suggest that Sony might be the 1st company to launch a TV set with the new interface.

Earlier in the year Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist (yes, that is his real job title) at Macrovision, told Pocket-lint that the company was working with Sony on implementing a new EPG system.

source:http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/25622/gallery/sony-epg-closer-rovi-liquid-1.html

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