Rovi Enters Agreement With Dixons for Rovi Entertainment Store Implementation in the UK

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
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Dixons Retail’s KNOWHOW Movies is Also the First Rovi Entertainment Store Agreement to Include DivX Plus Streaming

BARCELONA, Spain — Mobile World Congress 2012 — Rovi Corporation (Nasdaq:ROVI) today announced that Dixons Retail (LSE:DXNS), one of Europe’s largest specialist electrical retailer and services companies, has licensed the Rovi Entertainment Store to power a new over-the-top movie service – KNOWHOW Movies™ – in the UK.

Rovi Entertainment Store, the company’s end-to-end, white-label solution for storefront creation and management, will team with Dixons Retail to provide consumers convenient access to an extensive catalog of film and TV entertainment from a range of broadband-connected devices including HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players, and game consoles such as the PlayStation® 3, and Xbox™.

KNOWHOW Movies plans to launch on March 1 and will roll-out additional services over the following months on a range of smartphones, including iOS™ and Android-based devices, supported by Rovi Entertainment Store and promoted online and in Currys and PC World retail stores nationwide.

KNOWHOW Movies is also scheduled to offer DivX Plus Streaming, Rovi’s secure adaptive streaming solution that enables the digital delivery of a Blu-ray Disc-like entertainment experience. The adaptive streaming solution not only dynamically adjusts streams to help deliver maximum visual quality based on available bandwidth, but also offers an advanced feature set with support for 1080p, subtitles, multiple language tracks, and trick-play functions such as smooth fast forward and rewind.

“With KNOWHOW Movies, we are offering customers the most flexible service available – they will only pay for what they watch, will have access to the latest releases instantly, and can buy and view films and TV shows on any of their connected devices. We chose Rovi for this service because of their considerable depth of expertise in the provision of over-the-top on-demand services and extensive reach across the globe, which allows them to work seamlessly with our main suppliers and gives our customers access to the best service available,” said Niall O’Keeffe, KNOWHOW Development Director at Dixons Retail plc. “Although the launch of this service is breaking new ground for Dixons Retail, it is a natural extension for us given our position in the value chain where we have over 250 million customer interactions per year. The Rovi platform enables us to bring life to customers’ technology and deliver KNOWHOW Movies, which is simple to use and exciting for the user. It’s the perfect model for us and our customers.”

Rovi Entertainment Store enables retailers, service providers, CE manufacturers, content owners, and PC makers 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, as well as content licensing, management, and marketing services. The solution can be deployed as a complete end-to-end solution to support all aspects of storefront deployment and management, or as individual components that can be used to enhance an existing service.

“Dixons Retail is our first major retail customer in the UK and an ideal company to collaborate with to expand our footprint in Europe, and help further fuel interest in over-the-top entertainment,” said David Cook, senior vice president, Retail sales and marketing, Rovi. “As a leading consumer destination for technology and home entertainment products and services, Dixons Retail is in a strong position to help educate consumers and introduce them to the convenience, quality, and flexibility of IP-delivered video entertainment.”