Posts for 'Fanhattan'

Discovery and analytics provider Rovi has announced its acquisition of Fanhattan, a startup offering cloud-based discovery solutions as well as the innovative Fan TV connected TV device. Fanhattan combines live TV, VOD and OTT in one search experience powered from the cloud, which is available to viewers either through the web, an iOS device or the Fan TV.  

Omar Javaid, SVP/GM of Rovi's Discovery group told me the primary motivation for the deal was Fanhattan's cloud-based unified discovery technology, its team and the products. Fanhattan augments Rovi's existing next-generation discovery products. Rovi's customers include many pay-TV operators (Charter, Dish, etc.), device manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Sharp, etc.) and online entertainment services (Shazam, Facebook, MTV, etc.).

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I'm pleased to present the 168th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we start by discussing Akamai's new Ad Integration Services, which enables cloud-based video ad insertion, in partnership with mDialog.

This approach has multiple benefits including improving the user experience which extends view times. Colin notes that recent data from Conviva, for example, shows that a 1% increase in buffering results in 8 minutes of lost viewing time, which in turn means a loss of 2 ad breaks. Conviva estimates in 2012 this adds up to $2.2 billion in lost ad revenue globally, and by 2017, it could be $20 billion. Clearly improving the viewer experience has a significant payoff.

We then transition to talking about improvements in video discovery. Colin shares takeaways from his interview this week with Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit (Next Guide), which recently acquired Miso. And I share observations on the new web version of Fanhattan, which launched in beta yesterday.

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Video discovery app Fanhattan has launched its web site today in beta, offering the same convenient way to find a TV program or movie through one simple interface. Until now Fanhattan has only been available as an iOS app. Fanhattan's key value proposition is that it eliminates the complexity of searching across multiple services. This problem is only worsening for users as more video comes online and aggregators gain and lose rights over time.

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Fanhattan, the slick iOS video discovery app, has broken into the TV Everywhere world, adding content from HBO and Cinemax. Fanhattan users can now discover HBO programs and movies within Fanhattan and click through to view them if they are authenticated as HBO subscribers. Fanhattan is announcing the addition of HBO and Cinemax, plus NBC and CW programs this morning. Fanhattan now has 175K TV programs and movies from 14 premium entertainment apps discoverable, up from 4 apps at launch last year.

Fanhattan is also unveiling a new "WatchList" feature, which allows users to add a movie or TV show and be alerted when it becomes available on any of the 14 sources. For users, WatchList eliminates the confusion around where, how and when premium content is available, as it passes through multiple distribution windows and models.

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