Rovi Corp close to buying digital-video recording maker TiVo

US digital entertainment guides provider Rovi Corp, is close to buying digital-video recording maker TiVo Inc, Bloomberg yesterday reported citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Talks have progressed and Rovi could announce a deal by Friday, the report said.

TiVo has a market capitalisation of about $922 million, and Rovi is expected to pay a premium of about 10 per cent, implying a value of about $1 billion, Bloomberg added.

The two businesses are so similar that a combination is compelling in terms of both revenue and cost synergies, the report added.

Both companies had been in talks for some time, but were trying to sort out differences over valuation and intellectual property, as well as long-term value of patents.

Founded in 1997, TiVo is the developer of first commercially available DVR.

The California-based company is a global leader in advanced home entertainment service for virtually any platform or device. It offers services directly to customers as well as to cable, satellite and broadcasting companies.

Apart from the US, TiVo services are available in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Taiwan, Spain and the UK.

TiVo's cloud-based Software-as-a-Service solutions enable viewers to consume content across multiple screens in and out-of-the home. TiVo allows the user to navigate 'content chaos' by seamlessly combining live, recorded, on-demand and over-the-top television into one intuitive user interface with simple universal search, discovery, viewing and recording from a variety of devices.

Formed through the 2008 merger of Macrovision and Gemstar, Rovi, also based in California, is one of the largest owners of patents for digital entertainment devices with more than 5,000 issued or pending patents worldwide.

It provides digital entertainment technology solutions for the discovery and management of entertainment content. It offers guidance, home network connection, content protection, and media recognition technologies, as well as extensive metadata on movies, music, games, television, and books.

The company's media guide technology is an interactive on-screen portal to entertainment content from the Internet, broadcast, and personal content, and also offers home networking technology to simplify the transfer of content from one device to another within the home.