Rovi Acquires Fan TV, Gains Cloud-Based Discovery Solutions
Digital entertainment company Rovi announced yesterday that it has acquired Fanhattan and its cloud-based Fan TV line of products. The move makes sense for Rovi, which in the past year has taken steps to focus on entertainment discovery. In April of this year, Rovi sold its DivX and MainConcept business to focus on search, while in February it acquired search technology company Veveo.
Fan TV's cloud solution lets viewers view multiple programming sources, including linear television, video-on-demand services, and over-the-top platforms in one interface. By combining their strengths, Rovi hopes to bring innovative products to market sooner, and create flexible discovery solutions.
“Rovi prides itself in realizing innovations before the industry demands them, and we are excited to augment our next-generation guidance and discovery solutions with an award-winning unified entertainment experience,” says Omar Javaid, senior vice president and general manager of Rovi’s Discovery Group.
“We believe the Fanhattan technologies and team will complement Rovi’s advanced metadata, semantic discovery, and predictive analytics capabilities to offer truly differentiated solutions to our customers," he added.
Fan TV recently created a set-top box, which is now available to Time Warner Cable customers.
Rovi said the acquisition was an all-cash deal, but didn't disclose the price. Re/code reported that Fanhattan was seeking $15 million, and suggested that the company's investors probably didn't get their money back.
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