Santa Clara, Calif. –
and FourthWall Media said Monday that they have formed a partnership to provide
technology interactive enhancements to cable TV operations.
The collaboration will deliver new interactive solutions to
connect advertisers and programmers with audiences.
The combination of FourthWall’s Enhanced TV (ETV) platform and TV
Widgets with Rovi’s Guide offers service providers standards-based interactive
television and applications throughout North and South America.
In 2010, Rovi will begin to offer an integrated ETV Platform,
including FourthWall Media’s Enhanced Television Binary Interchange Format
(EBIF) user agent, ETV server, and TV widgets as part of Rovi’s guide
solutions.
The EBIF represents a standards-based platform for enhanced
television that allows providers to provide targeted and interactive
advertising, and interactive television widgets and applications across legacy
and next-generation digital set-top boxes.
Rovi’s ETV platform is designed to simplify the implementation of
new applications, making it easier for service providers to bring more advanced
features to consumers.
Under the agreement, Rovi will include in its guides an initial
set of pre-integrated TV widgets from FourthWall, including eBay on TV, Yellow
Pages on TV, news, weather, and numerous sports widgets for many major league,
teams and colleges.
Each TV widget can be hyper-personalized, turning the television
into an interactive, tailored experience for the viewer.
The integrated solution will also enable
service providers to
launch new EBIF applications developed by third parties.
The company’s said Rovi program guides with FourthWall’s EBIF
platform and applications will be integrated into set-top boxes from Motorola,
Cisco and Pace.
