John Malone’s Liberty Global, Samsung Ventures, and a third unnamed corporation have become strategic shareholders in DRM provider Widevine through a $15 million funding round.
The Seattle-based company, one of the first to deploy a form of cardless conditional access, is looking to position itself as a provider of digital entertainment solutions around the TV Everywhere strategy of cablenets, satcasters and telcos. The technology has been deployed in a number of popular internet movie services, and can be found in a number of consumer electronics products including televisions, Blu-ray players, mobile devices and gaming systems.
“Widevine will use the additional capital to support and grow our customer base, broaden our product portfolio and defend our intellectual property,” said Widevine CEO Brian Baker. “We are thrilled with the validation of our business, technology and markets provided by these industry leaders.”
Widevine’s other shareholders include Cisco Systems, Charter Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd (DNP), PaceSetter Capital Group, Phoenix Partners, TELUS, VantagePoint Venture Partners and Western Technology Investments.
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Connected TV Forecasts NEW REPORT. The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in this report from Digital TV Research, up from 124 million at end-2010. The report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from only 6% at end-2010. Published in November 2011, this 83-page PDF report is the most geographically comprehensive to ever be published.