Rovi Acquires Fan TV To Push Video Discovery Products

Rovi Acquires Fan TV

ROVI has acquired video discovery startup FAN TV, adding to its cloud-based guide offerings for service providers, while also giving it some consumer-facing apps, according to a report in TECHCRUNCH. FAN TV will now look to bring its streaming set-top box to more consumers. 

ROVI, which sells the technology to power the video guides of various ISPs and consumer electronics companies, gets a new cloud-based service it can offer up to its existing customers, while FAN TV gets backing from a sales force that can widen its distribution.

Originally called FANHATTAN, FAN TV emerged from BITTORRENT as a new video discovery platform at a time when there was no good way to find content across multiple different streaming services. By acquiring the OPEN MOVIE DATABASE back in 2010, it looked to dominate guide, navigation, and search of various consumer electronics devices like smart TVs.

The company then released a consumer-facing iPad app that aggregated titles from various different streaming services to help consumers find the content they wanted to watch, regardless of the service, and then link into whatever app had a given movie or TV show.

Last spring, the company rebranded as FAN TV and introduced a streaming set-top box aimed to replace the cable box most consumers were used to by offering an improved user interface to cable customers used to navigating streaming services with ROKU and APPLE TV devices. One year later, the company announced its first pact with TIME WARNER CABLE, who have just started making the device available to his customers.

ROVI now sports a cloud-based discovery guide that it can sell to manufacturers and operators, combining live TV, DVR, and streaming services as part of its guide. ROVI also recently acquired voice-search technoloy provider VEVEO, which could bring voice control to the group of apps and deviced powered by FAN TV.

An SEC filing from MAY notes that FAN TV had most recently closed $8.4 million in funding, and was seeking $15 million for acquisition.

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