Macrovision to Acquire Entertainment Metadata Specialist, Muze

Macrovision, the company which last year acquired the US's dominant EPG developer, Gemstar-TV Guide (and which has since divested itself of the latter's TV Guide Magazine, TV Guide Network, TV Guide Online and TVG properties), announced Wednesday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Muze, a New York-based company that provides entertainment information (metadata) products and discovery services. "Macrovision believes that professional entertainment metadata is required for our customers to provide best-in-class, consumer-facing products," Macrovision president and CEO, Fred Amoroso, said in a prepared statement. "The addition of the Muze assets will complement Macrovision's data solutions. It represents continued execution on our vision of delivering solutions that power a uniquely simple home entertainment experience."

Macrovision bills its solutions as enabling end-users to "continuously explore digital content by allowing them to easily navigate and find entertainment information." This, the company says, requires not only a rich library of entertainment metadata, but "detailed links" within that metadata to "expose the relationships between the content and artists" (such as other albums or songs an artist may have contributed to). "Macrovision's metadata is core to the entertainment experience of consumers around the world," John Moakley, EVP of Macrovision's Data Solutions Group, said in a prepared statement. "We believe the addition of Muze product and technology, including more metadata for European content, will result in a better solution for our customers by enhancing our overall metadata portfolio." Added Muze chair and CEO, Janice P Anderson: "Media information is more than an enhancement to a service, it's a necessity without which consumers would not be able to find what they are looking for. Macrovision is acquiring a unified and consistent approach to managing entertainment metadata, enabling consumers to more easily search and discover entertainment products."

According to Macrovision, the acquisition will see it paying $16.5 million in cash and is expected to close by the end of this month. It says that it expects the transaction to add approximately $5 million to its 2009 revenue estimates and to be slightly accretive to current 2009 adjusted pro forma earnings-per-share estimates.

In other Macrovision news: The company said Tuesday that ZyXEL Communications is using the Macrovision Connected Platform solution in its Network Storage Appliance (NSA) to support Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) guidelines. According to Macrovision, the Connected Platform solution allows ZyXEL to deploy advanced connectivity features to create DLNA-, UPnP- and DTCP-IP-compliant networked products that enable consumers to discover, manage and enjoy their digital media throughout the home. Macrovision bills the Connected Platform as a software development kit, provided in source code, that allows manufacturers to develop products that adhere to DLNA 1.5, UPnP and DTCP-IP guidelines, which together create a secure network where consumers can transmit and play back premium commercial content. It features a simple API, the company says, that helps shorten the development cycle of DLNA-compliant products, thus helping manufacturers conserve in-house development resources and accelerating time-to-market; and is designed for both digital media players and digital media servers. "We are excited to be working closely with ZyXEL as the company expands the breadth and capabilities of its digital home offerings," Akitaka Nishimura, Macrovision's SVP for the Asia-Pacific region, said in a prepared statement. "This relationship is proof that meeting DLNA standards is now a priority for major manufacturers in the industry and not just an afterthought or nice to have--we believe it is key to the future of the connected home."