BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 26, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mobile World Congress 2013 -- Rovi Corporation (Nasdaq:ROVI), driving digital entertainment innovation, today announced that it is sponsoring the Blender Foundation's 4K film, Tears of Steel. Scheduled for release in April, Tears of Steel will be one of the first films to be available in the 4K format, also known as '4K Ultra High Definition.' Rovi's sponsorship of the film demonstrates its commitment to driving industry adoption of H.265/HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec), the newly ratified compression standard that will enable delivery of 4K content and improve consumers' experience with streaming video across a range of devices. 4K refers to the horizontal resolution of the format which is about 4,000 pixels, providing twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of the 1080p HDTV format.
Rovi is helping drive the market availability of 4K through its work on the recently ratified HEVC video compression standard. As a crucial part of the ecosystem needed to enable universal deployment of 4K content across broadcast and bandwidth-constrained IP and mobile networks, HEVC or H.265 will dramatically increase the data compression ratio while maintaining H.264's visual quality. As announced at CES, Rovi is developing an end-to-end solution for personal and professional HEVC content creation, distribution and playback which can be utilized on PC, mobile and consumer electronics devices. Designed to drive HEVC adoption, the Rovi solution will enable customers across the video value chain to deliver higher quality video to consumers.
"Rovi is thrilled to be sponsoring the Blender Foundation's Tears of Steel, which is an innovative project utilizing the latest video technologies," said Ray DeRenzo, SVP of Marketing for Rovi Corporation. "4K represents a major step up from HD video. With compression standards like HEVC, UltraHD and 4K video is now within reach. We applaud Blender Foundation for supporting projects that are raising the bar in digital entertainment."
"Rovi's Premium Sponsorship of Tears of Steel helps validate and improve the open source content creation pipeline and drive collaborative efforts with our community-based projects," said Ton Roosendaal, Director, Blender Foundation. "The 4K production of Tears of Steel signals a milestone for our Foundation as well as for the industry. In tandem with our sponsors, we are fostering state of the art production using open source technology."
The Blender Foundation organizes projects that will help further stimulate development of advanced production-level features, as well as use and improve an open source creation pipeline. The project Tears of Steel was developed as an "Open Movie Project" using only free and open source software for the entire creation pipeline as well as Blender 3D creation software. Much like the original Tears of Steel release, the 4K film will be released as free and open content under the Creative Commons license. More information on the project is available at http://mango.blender.org/.
Rovi's HEVC Development Program is designed to enable companies participating in the digital video value chain to take advantage of the latest compression standard to reduce storage and bandwidth costs and deliver optimized, high-quality viewing experiences for consumers even in bandwidth-constrained environments. Rovi's end-to-end solution comprises new MainConcept® encoding SDKs for professional content creators; the DivX® Video Service with proven DivX DRM for protected content delivery for service providers, mobile operators and content retailers; DivX software tools for PC-based creation and playback, and a new DivX Certification program to allow IC and OEM customers to quickly bring to market mobile and consumer electronics products that support high-quality HEVC playback.
At Rovi's stand at Mobile World Congress (#7182 in hall seven of the Fira Gran Via), Rovi will be demonstrating DivX HEVC 720p integrated with DivX Plus Streaming® in support of MediaMarkt's premium video on-demand service, showcasing the delivery of premium content to mobile devices.
About Rovi Corporation
Rovi powers the discovery, delivery, display and monetization of digital entertainment. With innovative technology solutions for consumer electronics manufacturers, service providers, content producers, advertisers, retailers and websites, Rovi connects people and the entertainment they love. The company holds over 5,000 issued or pending patents worldwide and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. More information about Rovi can be found at rovicorp.com.
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