Rovi Acquires DVR Company TiVo For $1.1 Billion (usatoday.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 29, 2016 @10:20AM from the divide-and-conquer dept.

Major Blud writes: TiVo, maker of one of the first consumer DVR's, has been purchased by IP powerhouse Rovi (formerly known as Macrovision) for $1.1 Billion. The combined company will go by the TiVo name. According to USA Today, "Shares of Rovi (ROVI) were up 3.7% to $17.99 in premarket trading. TiVo (TIVO) shares closed Thursday up 2% to $9.42." The combined company will reportedly hold more than 6,000 patents related to TV and video technology. Both Robi and TiVo represent a $3 billion entertainment technology company, with saving synergies of $100 million expected over the first year, the companies said.

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Re:Macrovision by clonehappy · 2016-04-29 11:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Yes, Macrovision was most widely implemented by corrupting the vertical blanking signal which in turn caused the AGC in a consumer video recorder to go haywire and screw the video all to hell. The best part is that this little scheme did nothing to stop all but the most amateur pirates, as you could buy a cheap "Macrovision buster" to insert in-line with the video connection to remove the corruption, or use a professional deck with a TBC that was simply immune to it.
So as usual, commercial-scale pirates went about their business unscathed while fair use and the average consumer had the screws turned on them.