Rovi in EPG Patent Licensing Agreement with Australia's Hills Industries

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) said last week that it has signed a multi-year EPG patent license agreement with Australia's Hills Industries via the latter's DGTEC business.

According to the company, the deal provides Hills Industries with a license to Rovi's EPG patents for its Hills, DGTEC and other branded set-top boxes, TV's and DVR's for the Australian market. This, the company says, includes consumer electronics products developed under the Freeview brand, under the agreement between Rovi and Freeview Australia that was announced in October. (Note: Freeview Australia--which, as its name suggests, is similar in concept to the Freeview services that have been launched in the UK and New Zealand--is co-owned by Australian free-to-air broadcasters, ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine, Ten, Prime, Southern Cross and WIN, and is billed as upholding "Australians' right to watch quality television for free." It will be delivered via Freeview-endorsed receivers that will be available in retail stores. Earlier this year, it announced that it had selected MHEG-5 as its interactive TV middleware--see the article published on itvt.com, July 21st.) "By joining Rovi's patent licensing program, we will continue to bring enhanced technologies to our products that provide a compelling entertainment experience, especially as Australia moves to an all digital broadcasting system by the end of 2013," Steve Mannion, general manager of sales and marketing for Hills Antenna & TV Systems, said in a prepared statement. Added Rovi's SVP of licensing, Samir Armaly: "We continue to make progress with our licensing program in Australia and this agreement marks another milestone for Rovi. Hills Industries is committed to bringing the latest home entertainment technologies to Australian consumers and we are very pleased that our intellectual property will help them discover the TV programs that are important to them."

In other Rovi news: The company is in the early planning stages of developing a cable EPG that will integrate video from the Internet, according to an article by Todd Spangler in Multichannel News. Rovi's EVP of product management and marketing, Corey Ferengul, told Spangler that the company expects to be able to provide more information on the new IP-enabled EPG--which he said will be a completely separate product from its current cable EPG's--next year, and that the guide is being developed in response to the cable industry's concerns about the growing OTT phenomenon: "The [cable] industry has shifted in the last year," he explained. "Their fear of over-the-top video is pulling us forward more quickly than we were planning just six months ago."