Audio Video News

Rovi has bought TiVo, everyone’s favorite DVR maker, and adopted its name. Why is this $1.1 billion deal so richly ironic?

Rovi got its start in 1983 as Macrovision, a videocassette anti-copy system that caused strobing of images on playback of illegal tape-to-tape copies. As an unintended side effect, the system sometimes did the same even with authorized prerecorded tapes. So it’s quite an eyebrow raiser to see Macrovision’s successor absorbing a company devoted to personal video recording.

But Rovi has long since moved on to consumer friendlier technologies. Today its portfolio includes media guides, entertainment metadata, search and recommendation engines, a multi-platform advertising service, and audience management tools.

The combined company will serve 28 million homes worldwide with program guides—18 million from Rovi and 10 million from TiVo.