TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property within the consumer electronics industry, including digital rights management, electronic program guide software, and metadata. The company holds over 6,000 pending and registered patents. The company also provides analytics and recommendation platforms for the video industry.
Toshiba Corporation, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives (HDD), printers, batteries, lighting, as well as IT solutions such as quantum cryptography which has been in development at Cambridge Research Laboratory, Toshiba Europe, located in the United Kingdom, now being commercialised. It was one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. As a semiconductor company and the inventor of flash memory, Toshiba had been one of the top 10 in the chip industry until its flash memory unit was spun off as Toshiba Memory, later Kioxia, in the late 2010s.
Aiwa (アイワ) is a consumer electronics brand owned and used by various companies in different regions of the world. American and other regions are owned by Chicago-based Aiwa Corporation. Towada Audio based in Tokyo owns rights in Japan and elsewhere and has been manufacturing Aiwa-branded products since 2017. In Mexico and other countries in Latin America, rights are owned by Audio Mobile Americas, S.A.
Best Buy is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
The enhanced versatile disc (EVD) is an optical-medium-based digital audio/video format, developed by Beijing E-World, as a rival to the DVD to avoid the high royalty costs associated with the DVD format. Its development was supported by the Chinese government. While it was intended to replace the DVD standard in China by 2008, the format had failed to gain traction and ultimately faded into obsolescence.
Pioneer Corporation commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop. Its current president is Susumu Kotani.
PLBY Group, Inc. is an American global media and lifestyle company founded by Hugh Hefner as Playboy Enterprises, Inc. to oversee the Playboy magazine and related assets. Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California.
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc. The BDA is divided into three levels of membership: the board of directors, contributors, and general members.
TCL Technology is a Chinese electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong Province. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells consumer products including television sets, mobile phones, air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and small electrical appliances. In 2010, it was the world's 25th-largest consumer electronics producer. It became the second-largest television manufacturer by market share by 2019.
DVD region codes are a digital rights management technique introduced in 1997. It is designed to allow rights holders to control the international distribution of a DVD release, including its content, release date, and price, all according to the appropriate region.
Silicon Image is a provider of semiconductors for the mobile, consumer electronics and personal computers (PCs). It also manufactures wireless and wired connectivity products used for high-definition content. The company’s semiconductor and IP products are deployed by the electronics manufacturers in devices such as smartphones, tablets, digital televisions (DTVs), other consumer electronics, as well as desktop and notebook PCs. Silicon Image, in cooperation with other companies, has driven the creation of some global industry standards such as DVI, HDMI, MHL, and WirelessHD.
Coby Electronics Corporation was an American manufacturer of consumer electronics products headquartered in Lake Success, New York, with offices and factories around the world. With the joint efforts of Coby Electronics Co. of Hong Kong and Coby Electronics Corp. of the United States, the products reached consumers in Asia, North America, South America and Europe; however, the company mostly sold in Europe and the United States. Coby also served as an OEM manufacturer for brands including Samsung, NEC, RadioShack's Presidian brand and Hyundai. Coby formerly provided OEM manufacturing for Daewoo before it became defunct. Its products are still available today.
The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format invented and developed in 1995 and released in late 1996. Currently allowing up to 17.08 GB of storage, the medium can store any kind of digital data and was widely used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc storage format. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name "Blu-ray" refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format.
BBK Electronics Corporation is a Chinese multinational conglomerate. The company in electronics such as television sets, MP3 players, digital cameras and smartphones. It is one of the world's largest smartphone manufacturers.
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia in the 2000s until it was supplanted by the high-definition Blu-ray Disc. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 decoder. Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats. Typically, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. DVD-Video was first available in Japan on November 1, 1996, followed by a release on March 24, 1997 in the United States—to line up with the 69th Academy Awards that same day.
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works, as well as systems that enforce these policies within devices.
Quickflix was an Australian company that provided online DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental by mail as well as internet streaming of movies and television shows via online pay-per-view or subscription.
OPPO Digital is an overseas division of Chinese company BBK Electronics, sharing the brand name OPPO with OPPO Electronics, also owned by BBK. Established in 2004 in Menlo Park, California, US, it conducted all of its sales online. OPPO Digital designed and marketed audio and video equipment, including Blu-ray Disc players and personal audio products such as headphones and headphone amplifiers, mainly targeting markets in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and India.
