Rovi and FourthWall Media Collaborate on Enhanced TV Platform

Monday, February 8th, 2010
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The Combination of FourthWall’s ETV Platform and TV Widgets® with Rovi’s Guide Offers Service Providers a Solution for Standards-Based Interactive Television and Applications

PLANO, Texas and SANTA CLARA, Calif. — FourthWall Media (formerly BIAP) and Rovi Corporation (Nasdaq: ROVI) today announced that they have signed an agreement to offer an Enhanced Television (ETV) solution to many of Rovi’s Interactive Program Guide customers throughout North and South America. In 2010, Rovi will begin to offer an integrated ETV Platform, including FourthWall Media’s EBIF User Agent, ETV Server, and TV Widgets® as part of Rovi’s guide solutions.

EBIF, or “Enhanced Television Binary Interchange Format,” represents a standards-based platform for enhanced television. By deploying EBIF technology, service providers can easily offer targeted and interactive advertising, and interactive television widgets and applications across legacy and next-generation digital set-top boxes (STBs). Rovi’s ETV Platform is designed to simplify the implementation of new applications, making it easier for service providers to bring more advanced features to consumers. According to analyst research firm, SNL Kagan, by year-end 2011, 89% or 42.9 million digital cable subscriber households in the United States will be EBIF-enabled.

“We are very excited to begin a relationship with Rovi,” said Tim Peters, FourthWall Media CEO. “Its program guide has changed the way consumers watch television. Our integrated cross-platform solution will open the cable environment to further technology advancements. By working together, we can meet market needs to connect advertisers and programmers with their audiences.”

Under the agreement, Rovi will make available seamlessly through its guides an initial set of pre-integrated TV Widgets® from FourthWall. These include eBay on TV, Yellow Pages on TV, News, Weather, and numerous Sports widgets for nearly every major league, team and college. Each TV Widget® can be hyper-personalized turning the television into an interactive, tailored experience for the viewer. In addition, the integrated solution will enable service providers to launch new EBIF applications developed by third-parties.

“Our collaboration with FourthWall enables service providers to deliver a more engaging and data-rich environment for the consumer that can be accessed through the program guide with the click of a remote control,” said Corey Ferengul, executive vice president of product management and marketing, Rovi Corporation. “FourthWall, a leading EBIF platform and interactive applications provider, will help us bring an integrated offering to the market that will enable service providers to drive increased revenue streams through value-added services.”

Rovi program guides with FourthWall’s EBIF platform and applications will be integrated to work on STBs from Motorola, Cisco Systems and Pace plc. Rovi currently serves close to 500 service providers in North America and South America, many of whom will now have access to this expanded product offering.