February 8, 2010

Rovi, FourthWall Join for ETV Platform

FourthWall Media (formerly BIAP) and Rovi Corporation have signed an agreement to offer an enhanced television (ETV) solution to many of Rovi's interactive program guide customers throughout North and South America.

In 2010, Rovi will begin to offer an integrated ETV platform, including FourthWall Media's EBIF user agent, ETV server, and TV widgets as part of Rovi's guide solutions.

Enhanced Television Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) represents a standards-based platform for enhanced TV. By deploying EBIF technology, service providers can offer targeted and interactive advertising, and interactive TV widgets and applications across legacy and next-generation digital set-top boxes.

Under the agreement, Rovi will provide, through its guides, an initial set of pre-integrated TV widgets from FourthWall. These include eBay on TV, Yellow Pages on TV, as well as news, weather and sports widgets. The integrated solution will also enable service providers to launch new EBIF applications developed by third-parties.

Rovi program guides with FourthWall's EBIF platform and applications will be integrated to work on set-top boxes from Motorola, Cisco and Pace.