Macrovision buys consumer electronics software co., Mediabolic for $43.5M

Updated

Macrovision of Santa Clara has acquired San Mateo consumer electronics software provider Mediabolic for $43.5 million in cash, the company said.

The deal didn’t make Mediabolic’s investors too much money. The company received nearly $20 million in capital since 2000, so once you consider the time value of money, this was about break-even for investors. Backers included Aurora Ventures and Spinnaker Ventures early on, followed by AsiaTech Management, D&M Holdings and Intel Capital. (Update: We’ve since been told by a source close to this company that the later investors made money on this deal, while the early investors likely did not).

Macrovision makes DVD software that secures entertainment content like movies and games, and this is an effort to expand into distribution. The Mercury News has a good summary of the deal’s significance here. Some snippets:

Mediabolic makes software that allows consumer electronics devices like digital video recorders and mobile phones to work together better. The software eventually could let people, say, play music from their televisions on their phones.

…For more than a decade, technology companies have touted the concept of the digital home, where devices communicate easily with one another and with their human owners. Mediabolic was one of several companies — including Rearden Steel, which developed Digeo’s Moxi Media Center, and Ucentric, now part of Motorola — founded during the dot-com boom to pursue this as-yet-unrealized vision. Currently, 90 percent of Americans think the digital home is “very expensive” and two-thirds said it was too hard to set up…