Rovi Unveils Product Roadmap for its Passport Guide

Rovi (formerly Macrovision--for more on the company's name change and the repositioning it heralds, see the interview with Rovi chief evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle, that was published on itvt.com, July 16th) on Monday provided some information on the roadmap for its Passport Guide EPG, which is targeted at service providers in the US, Canada and Latin America. Among other things, it says that Passport will incorporate new features, such as remote record and VOD search, that are designed to make it easier for viewers to discover and watch TV content on their own schedules. "There is an influx of television content that is readily available today to the consumer through the service provider, yet finding this content can sometimes be a difficult maze to navigate, with preset schedules often getting in the way," Corey Ferengul, Rovi's EVP of marketing and product management, said in a prepared statement. "We're making investments in our Passport Guide to help service providers deliver their services to the consumer while helping consumers more easily access the content that is available."

Rovi says that the enhancements it is planning for Passport are designed to address the fact that an increasing amount of TV programming is watched in timeshifted mode (note: it cites figures from Nielsen's September, 2009 Three Screen Report which it says show that timeshifting is up 37.3% year-over-year and that viewing has increased 1.2% in the same period). According to the company, the planned Passport enhancements include:

• VOD Search, which will be "conveniently integrated" with Passport's current search functionality. Rovi says that viewers will be able to use the feature to search titles, descriptions and cast and that search results will appear on a single screen alongside results from TV listings or combined on-demand and TV listings.
• Whole Home VOD, which will allow viewers to share programming between digital set-top boxes. For example, Rovi says, a viewer could start a VOD program in one room on a Passport-enabled set-top and then stop it and resume play in another room on a different Passport-enabled box.
• Primetime TV, which will allow viewers to replay primetime TV shows from certain broadcast networks and cable channels offered by their operator, without having to set a recording in advance.
• VOD Pick List, which will allow viewers to use a Web application to browse on-demand content available to them, and then select programming to be put in their VOD queue for viewing later.
• Remote Record, which will allow viewers to set recordings on their DVR from any device that can connect to the Internet and open a Web browser. Rovi says that this feature will be supported by its hosted communications infrastructure and Web-based listings application.

According to Rovi, the Passport Guide will also incorporate various new features for service providers, including "additional flexibility" to introduce an MSO-customized interactive home page, send targeted messages directly to customers' set-top boxes, and designate the navigation path to direct customers to an area of the operator's choice after a VOD program has finished playing.

The new Passport Guide features are slated to roll out in two separate releases in the first half of 2010.