Rovi Corporation announced that it has released its MainConcept High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) SDK 1.0.

For more information visit: www.rovicorp.com

Unedited press release follows:

Rovi Releases MainConcept HEVC SDK

Designed to Streamline the Adoption of the New Compression Standard and Speed the Conversion of Entertainment Libraries into HEVC-Compatible Streaming Formats Including DivX Plus Streaming

Santa Clara, Calif. – 6/4/2013 – Rovi Corporation (NASDAQ: ROVI), driving digital entertainment innovation, today released MainConcept® HEVC SDK 1.0, one of the first broadly available solutions for streamlining the integration of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265 into virtually any video application, service or environment. The new SDK not only enables developers who serve the broadcast, professional content creation, mobile, and consumer industries to increase the ease with which high-quality video content is delivered through existing cable, internet and wireless channels, but it also features innovative new technology to reduce content conversion times.

Rovi’s patent-pending Smart Adaptive Bitrate Encoding Technology (SABET)™ is designed to speed the market’s adoption of the new compression standard by lowering the costs and reducing the time required for the mass transcoding of large video content libraries to HEVC. SABET enables the generation of as many as ten simultaneous output streams from a single source, reducing CPU cycles by utilizing common encoding processes across all levels. This processing efficiency is expected to help streamline the delivery of video for adaptive formats such as DivX Plus Streaming™, Apple HLS, or MPEG-DASH.

“Certainly one of the major challenges service providers and content owners face in switching to a new codec is converting their vast entertainment catalogs,” said Avni Rambhia, Senior Industry Analyst of Frost & Sullivan’s Digital Media Practice. “The challenge becomes even greater given the requirement to support streaming and adaptive bitrate formats that involve transcoding each piece of content into as many as 10 different profiles or individual streams. Given that content availability is a key to driving device manufacturers and others in the industry to support HEVC, technology like SABET should not only help speed content availability, but also fuel overall market adoption.”

For the more than 50 companies participating in Rovi’s HEVC beta program that was launched earlier this year, including representatives from some of the leading companies in digital media creation, transcoding, and delivery, the release of the MainConcept HEVC SDK 1.0, marks the opportunity to transition from evaluating and testing the new compression standard, to driving toward the release of compatible products and services. Based on world-renowned codec libraries, the SDK offers a flexible MainConcept Application Programming Interface (API) to ease the process of adding HEVC support to new or in-market solutions and includes an HEVC encoder and decoder.

“Current codec technology and IP infrastructure are straining to keep up with demands from consumers for high-quality digital content across multiple screens,” said Kanaan Jemili, SVP, Product Management, Rovi Corporation. “HEVC is the key to satisfying these demands, so we believe the release of MainConcept HEVC SDK 1.0 is a significant milestone that will help kick start third-party development, as well as Rovi’s own significant product development efforts to support the entire end-to-end value chain.”

As well as being a key technology for third-party developers, MainConcept HEVC SDK 1.0 is a core component of Rovi’s end-to-end solution for enabling and accelerating HEVC adoption through the entire video value chain – from professional and consumer content creation to secure delivery and multi-platform enhanced playback. Rovi’s end-to-end solution includes 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 consumer 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.

Expected to have a significant impact on video distribution and consumption, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265 is designed to offer almost double the compression efficiency of H.264 and therefore reduce storage and bandwidth costs, as well as support higher resolutions such as 4K. The MainConcept HEVC SDK is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, 32 and 64 bit versions, low level C++ API and DirectShow filters. More information is available at: mainconcept.com/hevc.

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.