TiVo has announced the acquisition of search and recommendation specialists Digitalsmiths in a move the DVR developer says will provide a significant expansion in market opportunity.
Digitalsmiths is largely associated with the US market, where it has relationships with 7 of the top 10 US pay-TV operators, however it also powers services for the UK’s Zeebox and Australia’s Foxtel. Its cloud-based service allows operators to run an advanced user experience integrating search, recommendations, discovery and browsing across a variety devices including iOS, Android, Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Kindle and multiple set-top boxes
“The Digitalsmiths acquisition opens new opportunities to commercialize and deploy TiVo’s cloud based services and technologies to operators, in an extremely cost-effective way that can be offered either independently or in conjunction with TiVo’s renowned user interface,” said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo. “Additionally, Digitalsmiths contributes expertise, data opportunities, and approaches that complement and extend TiVo’s extensive work in advanced television to customers seeking search, recommendations, and portability.”
“The Digitalsmiths team is excited to be part of TiVo,” said Ben Weinberger, CEO and co-founder of Digitalsmiths. “Both Digitalsmiths and TiVo share an acute focus to improve the consumers’ viewing experience, and we understand the importance of the ‘service’ or ‘cloud’ to achieve this goal through next generation personalized video discovery solutions. “I look forward to working as part of the TiVo team to provide a best-in-class product set to service providers, consumer electronics manufacturer’s and content providers.”
The move can be seen as another move by TiVo into the cloud following the earlier restructuring of its hardware team.
