Friday, January 4, 2013

Rovi Plans To Sell Former CinemaNow Technology

The long, turbulent history of the video-on-demand technology developed by former Marina Del Rey-based CinemaNow continues today, after current owner Rovi Corporation said Thursday afternoon that it plans to pursue a sale of its Rovi Entertainment Stores business--the remains of CinemaNow. Rovi said it has retained GCA Savvian Advisors, LLC, to advise it in the sale. Rovi said the move comes as part of an effort to focus on growth opportunities in its core business. CinemaNow was acquired by Rovi in late 2010 for $720M from Sonic Solutions, which acquired CinemaNow in 2008. CinemaNow originally offered up Hollywood movies, television shows, and music videos for rental and streaming from the Internet. That model was turned on its head by the emergence of sites like Hulu, YouTube, and many other free (or mostly free) video. Rovi's Entertainment Stores business is the former, white-label technology behind what was CinemaNow; the CinemaNow name (but not technology) was actually sold to Best Buy for their own consumer Internet video service by Sonic.