Rovi, from today the new name for Macrovision, has given details of a new media guide that will provide a link between broadcast and on demand content as well as the consumer’s own electronic libraries.
In an interview with Broadband TV News Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist for Rovi, said the new product, codenamed Liquid, was aimed at those manufacturers that produced their own guide. Bulwinkle argued that it was complimentary to what Yahoo! presented as Connected TV, and for manufacturers looking to develop their own offering within high-end television receivers.
Liquid will offer three distinct, but integrated, guides covering television [linear] content, broadband content and personal content. The ability to pull in full length TV and movie content from the web underlines the threat from over-the-top providers that the traditional pay-TV operators are facing. The guide will store profiles for individual users and has a link to social networking, such as the movie application Flixter.
“When you’re browsing the guide you’ll see pictures of the actors and you might even see scenes from the shows, so you can watch a preview of a show, which really brings the guide to life,” says Bullwinkle. We’ll even bring the metadata to your own personal content, so you’re music may say the name of the track and even what the album is called, but we’ll now show you the lyrics, the other things the artist has done, and a review of the album.” Much of the data will be drawn from Macrovision’s AMG division that already supplies the information found in the iTunes’ Genius bar.
It is anticipated that Liquid will be made available to consumer electronics manufacturers early in 2010.
News Alert
- Extended Richard Bullwinkle interview in the next New Television Insider
