01/14, 5:55am
Rovi makes play for royalties it claims are owing
Rovi Corp. is suing Amazon and its subsidiary IMDb. Rovi, formally known as Macrovision, acquired Gemstar-TV guide in 2008 and in doing so picked up a number of patents pertaining to delivering TV Guides online. Rovi’s suit, filed in Delaware, claims that IMDb’s TV guides infringe five of its patents. Rovi already licenses its TV Guides to several major media stakeholders including Apple, Cisco, Comcast, DirecTV, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Time Warner, Verizon and Yahoo.
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09/08, 7:45am
RealDVD
Real early on Monday introduced a potentially controversial app that could affect the legality of media transcoding. RealDVD would be one of the first DVD ripping programs from a major developer but claims to dodge the legal setbacks that have shut down earlier apps: the software preserves Macrovision's CSS encryption and limits sending copies to a maximum of five authorized PCs. The solution would let notebook owners or a whole home play a DVD movie from anywhere, Real claims.
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01/03, 5:35pm
Macrovision, CinemaNow
Macrovision, the company largely responsible for modern DVD copy-protection schemes, has officially integrated its technologies with CinemaNow to offer downloads of CinemaNow premium video directly to Macrovision-enabled consumer electronics devices. Users who have registered Macrovision-enabled hardware at CinemaNow.com can use those devices to watch movies, TV shows, and music videos from CinemaNow's online library of available programming, according to TWICE.
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12/07, 3:00pm
Macrovision buys TV Guide
Gemstar-TV Guide International will be bought by Macrovision in a deal worth $2.8 billion, Reuters says. The deal is unusual for several reasons; among these is the fact that Gemstar is actually larger than Macrovision, requiring the latter company to enter $800 million in new debt, which in turn has triggered a 25 percent drop in its stock. For most people, however, the deal is important because Macrovision is responsible for the CSS copy protection on DVDs, and Gemstar produces both TV Guide magazine and similarly-themed TV channels.
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