Rovi Corporation, driving digital entertainment innovation, today announced Rovi Digital Copy for Retailers, a new offering that is expected to provide consumers in Europe and the U.S. more ways to turn their physical DVD and Blu-ray Disc movie collections into virtual movie libraries. Rovi Digital Copy for Retailers offers solutions for in-store disc-to-digital conversion services, as well as retailer-branded in-home services. Both services will use industry proven Rovi technologies for content recognition and authentication, and utilize core components of Rovi Entertainment Store™, the company’s platform for digital storefront creation and management.
Rovi Digital Copy for Retailers ties into UltraViolet™ - the cloud-based entertainment ecosystem delivering a new way to collect and enjoy home video entertainment. The offering can be integrated as a component of services already powered by Rovi Entertainment Store, or incorporated into existing digital entertainment service infrastructures. Rovi expects the first retailer services powered by Rovi Digital Copy for Retailers to be introduced later this year.
With in-home disc-to-digital services, consumers simply insert a DVD or Blu-ray Disc title into a Rovi Digital Copy-enabled PC or Blu-ray Disc player. In the case of in-store offerings, consumers bring their physical disc collections into a participating store where a sales representative will lead them through the ‘conversion’ process. In both instances, once titles are authorized by the content owner, consumers will then be presented with the opportunity to purchase and trigger access to an UltraViolet digital copy. Digital copies can then be enjoyed by consumers on a range of UltraViolet-enabled connected devices, such as HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, game consoles, smartphones, tablets, and PCs.
“Forming an elegant bridge between physical media and digital entertainment, Rovi Digital Copy for Retailers provides new ways for brick and mortar retailers, as well as online movie storefront operators to introduce more consumers to the benefits of cloud-based entertainment,” said David Cook, General Manager of Rovi Entertainment Store. “As well as helping fuel the digital transition by turning consumers’ physical DVD libraries into virtual shelves, the solution will serve as an ideal complement to the broad range of capabilities we offer through the Rovi Entertainment Store and a natural extension to our support of retailers wishing to participate in the UltraViolet ecosystem.”
Rovi Entertainment Store is enabling retailers, service providers, CE manufacturers, and content owners, to launch over-the-top storefronts that allow consumers to discover, purchase, manage, and enjoy a broad range of new movies and TV shows on multiple platforms and devices. Rovi Entertainment Store includes white-label storefronts and playback client SDKs, cloud services, an advanced adaptive streaming format - DivX Plus Streaming™ - as well as content licensing, management, and marketing services. The solution can be deployed as a complete end-to-end solution to support multiple aspects of storefront deployment and management, or as individual components that can be used to enhance an existing service.
As a member of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) consortium and a licensee of UltraViolet – the ecosystem delivering a new way to collect and enjoy home video entertainment, Rovi is helping customers rapidly deploy compatible products and services. Specifically, through its Rovi Entertainment Store technologies and services, Rovi is enabling UltraViolet digital collection support within existing and future retail customer storefronts; therefore, allowing consumers to buy UltraViolet-enabled content and/or access their entertainment purchases from a broad range of devices.
During IFA, August 31 to September 5 (Hall 25, Stand 146) in Berlin, Rovi will be hosting demonstrations of Rovi Entertainment Store along with a full complement of new and in-market solutions driving the industry’s transition to IP-based entertainment.
