Pace to Incorporate Rovi's Connected Platform Solution into Set-Tops for US, Canada, Latin America

Rovi (formerly Macrovision--for more on the company's name change and the repositioning it heralds, see the interview with Rovi chief evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle, that was published on itvt.com, July 16th) announced Monday that UK-based set-top box vendor, Pace, is using the Rovi Connected Platform solution in "next-generation" set-top boxes targeted at cable operators and other service providers in the US, Canada and Latin America. Rovi bills the Connected Platform as designed to help CE and CPE manufacturers and distributors speed time-to-market and differentiate their offerings by enabling them to develop networked products that store, discover, and play back personal and Internet-based content. "We are committed to working with our customers in the service provider and cable markets to provide consumers with a cutting-edge entertainment experience that allows access to multiple types of digital media in the home," Pace's VP of product development, Bruce Gureck, said in a prepared statement. "The Rovi Connected Platform is a comprehensive solution that enables us to easily integrate with the latest interoperability standards that help to enable access to premium, recorded and personal content from a variety of locations and devices."

The new partnership extends an existing relationship between Rovi and Pace, which back in 2007 (when Rovi was still known as Macrovision) collaborated to demo a multi-room digital home experience based on Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) specifications. Pace added DLNA capabilities to its set-top box and server products by integrating Rovi's media player and media server software with existing Pace software, in order to demo how digital content could be accessed and viewed from any room in the home.

Rovi bills its Connected Platform as providing scalable and extensible technologies that support an array of applications and network environments (note: supported standards, according to the company, include DLNA, UPnP, DTCP-IP and OCAP/tru2way). The company says that the solution includes an extensive package of standards-based development tools and reference designs, enabling consumer electronics manufacturers to customize advanced digital home entertainment products. It consists of a source code development kit, player and server software applications, and a customizable user interface. According to Rovi, the solution is OS- and chip-agnostic, and helps CE device manufacturers to select which components and feature add-ons they want. "Today's consumer has access to an endless source of available digital entertainment content but, once acquired, this content can have limited uses," Rovi's SVP of marketing and sales, Simon Adams, said in a prepared statement. "We are pleased to collaborate with Pace as they continue to develop innovative set-top box products that give operators and service providers more choice on how to implement secure content-sharing capabilities in their infrastructure while also taking the digital home entertainment experience to new heights for the consumer."