Rovi powering Dixons KNOWHOW Movies digital store

Rovi and Dixons have announced a partnership that will see the Rovi Entertainment Store white-label digital storefront power the electrical retailer’s KNOWHOW Movies digital store.

The KNOWHOW Movies store will offer an “extensive catalogue” of film and TV video content to a range of web-connected devices, including HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players and games consoles.

“Consumers can use it to get content quickly and easily,” said Rovi’s David Burton, Director of Marketing Services, EMEA.

“They want their media on any device, and don’t want to have to worry about how it’s being delivered as a Windows Media Video file on one device and being picked up and continued on another as a Flash file. People don’t understand why it can’t be that simple; they’ll say ‘Why can’t I have this movie on every device? I’ve got all these smart devices, why isn’t it possible?’ Our delivery service makes it easy and simple to do that.”

Movies streamed through the store will also make use of Rovi’s DivX Plus Streaming method, which adapts the quality of the delivered video to match the speed of your broadband, resulting in stutter free playback. It also offers support for 1080p, subtitles, multiple language tracks, and trick-play functions such as smooth fast forward and rewind.

The store is designed to capitalise on the growing use of over-the-top-distribution movie services, which Burton believes will only increase in popularity as the world increasingly becomes broadband and 4G connected:

“By 2016 it’s estimated that 70% of homes will be broadband connected, and then there’s also satellite services and 4G to come too. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the idea of being able to pass HD movies around wirelessly through the home, which the storefront caters for”.

The KNOWHOW Movies store will launch on March 1st. iOS and Android apps are to follow shortly afterwards.