TiVo said it has renewed an agreement with J:COM, Japan’s largest cable operator, in the form of a multi-year license for TiVo’s G-Guide and other intellectual property.

TiVo said the new license agreement covers J:COM’s cable VOD service, and has been expanded to cover OTT subscribers accessing content on mobile devices and PCs. G-Guide is an HTML5-based guide, and an "xD" implementation is a mobile version for smartphones and tablets. 

TiVo said the agreement also extends to J:COM’s license to cover its over-the-top subsidiaries. Financial terms were not disclosed.

RELATED: TiVo, Roku Strike Multi-Year Patent Deal

TiVo manages OTT assets that are tucked into the Intellectual Ventures (IV) patent portfolio. That came into play in February 2016, when Rovi, prior to its merger with TiVo, and IV announced an agreement in which their patents and intellectual property would be managed under a unified licensing program.

Rovi has introduced i-Guide HD R32, a high-definition version of its set-top guide with a refreshed user interface.

Rovi said Click! Network, a competitive cable provider run by Tacoma Power in Washington, is the first operator to deploy the new version of i-Guide.

In addition to the HD spruce up, the new guide also adds features such as “HD Auto-Tune (automatically tunes from a channel’s standard-def feed to the HD version) and a refreshed TV listings grid.

Rovi, which is in the process of acquiring TiVo for $1.1 billion, said i-Guide HD R32 is available for MSOs with Arris set-top boxes in North America, and expects that operators with Pace boxes (Arris acquired Pace in January) will have access to it later this year.

“We are dedicated to serving our customers, especially as they develop next-generation guides and introduce advanced entertainment services,” Michael Hawkey, senior vice president and general manager of the discovery business group at Rovi, said in a statement. “i-Guide demonstrates our ongoing commitment to our customers in the face of rapid technology developments and subscriber demands. Our customers are gaining a competitive edge by providing new and user-friendly experiences for entertainment discovery.”

Comcast has rolled out another wave of additions and enhancements to its X1 platform, including a new feature that aims to simplify the process for customers to verify and activate their accounts at the set-top box level.

On that front, Comcast has begun to roll out a new screen for X1 that lets customers verify by entering the last digits of the account’s primary phone number.

“This simplified verification saves customers and technicians time and alleviates the frustration of having to enter a long account number,” Peter Nush, the company’s VP of product management, explained in this blog post.

Among the other additions, Comcast has also added a search feature that only pulls up shows that are available on-demand from networks that don’t necessarily appear on a linear, live channel. Examples of that include Angry Birds Toons and Kabillion.

Comcast has also extended its “Auto Extend” feature to more live events, now spanning the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS NASCAR and NCAA men’s football and basketball. Auto Extend is has become the default “stop” setting for recording options on X1.

Additionally, the Comcast Labs section of X1 is now testing a “Default Guide View” component that enables subs to control and personalize the kind of content they see when pressing the Guide button of the remote. Using this test feature, customers can now use that button to select a particular guide view – such as HD Channels, Favorites, the X1 Trending guide, or the Kids guide view. Those various guide options can still be pulled up by pressing the Guide button twice.

At last check, Comcast has been deploying about 40,000 X1 boxes a day, with about 35% of its video base on the platform. The MSO expects to push that to 50% by year end.

Cox, one of the MSOs licensing the platform, confirmed this week that it has rolled out its new X1-based Contour offering to all systems except for Virginia, which will come online later this month.