Gracenote Gets into Identifying DVDs

Gracenote's music CD database has long been indispensable to music fans; now, the company is launching a service that identifies DVDs.

Gracenote’s CDDB database of audio CDs has long been a valuable tool for music fans: just pop a CD into your computer drive (or even drives on select home electronics) and the CDDB can usually retrieve the artist, album and track titles, and other information. The CDDB isn’t perfect—and sometimes makes some amusing mis-identifications—but it’s usually a lot more convenient than filling out track, title, genre, and other information yourself.

Now, Gracenote wants to do the same thing for DVD’s, announcing its new VideoID system for identifying DVD discs. VideoID will be able to pull up in-depth information on almost 200,000 DVD titles, including title, director, cast, genre, production crew, keywords, release date, languages, awards, and more. The idea is that (say) an onscreen interface and retrieve information about discs in a user’s CD changer and present that information in a useful way; similarly, developers could implement DVD jukebox software (sort of like iTunes, but for DVDs) which would enable users to create a searchable, sortable database of their DVD movies. Instead of scanning shelves (or boxes) to see if you have anything you feel like watching, users could quickly sort through their collection by genre or cast and see if anything jumps out.

Gracenote has also inked a multi-year agreement with D&M Holdings to standardize the VideoID system across its consumer brands, which include Denon, Boston Acoustics, Snell Acoustics, ReplayTV, Calrec Audio, and D&M brands. VideoID will work with Gracenote’s existing MusicID platform to offer an all-in-one media recognition service, which should appeal both to system developers and consumers.

"The combined MusicID and VideoID-DVD product completes the most effective media identification suite the industry has ever seen," said Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote’s senior VP of sales and marketing, in a statement. "We’re thrilled to have D&M Holdings embrace our solution and look forward to a long partnership with both music and movie recognition an integral part of their product line."

VideoID should launch in mid-2008.