News

Imerge Partners with GD3 Data to Deliver an Even Better User Experience (2/9/2009)

Important new deal ensures Imerge media servers deliver the most advanced cover art and metadata facilities currently available

Imerge, the Cambridge-based pioneer of hard disk home media servers, is delighted to announce its new partnership with GD3 Data – the market leader in CD/DVD encoding software and metadata.

As a result of this partnership, Imerge will add GD3 cover art and metadata layering to its other licensed databases, thereby delivering the most comprehensive metadata and cover art recognition system currently available. Users of Imerge’s media server hardware around the world will benefit from an exceptional online repository of images and information, downloaded and displayed automatically to accompany virtually any movie or piece of music that the end-user chooses to add to his or her media library.

In addition to greatly enhanced cover art and metadata coverage, Imerge’s partnership with GD3 Data also delivers higher quality, hi-res cover images, while a specially developed ‘tool’ gives customers – both authorised dealers and end-users – the ability to submit cover art and metadata for music and movies that are not currently represented within the database.

For example, if an Imerge user buys a brand-new DVD in Hong Kong and finds that related cover art and content information is not yet available via the current databases, he can use the submission tool to make the relevant additions himself. These are then uploaded to a special Imerge-GD3 database, the content of which can be accessed by Imerge users around the world. This exceptional facility adds even greater versatility to the media server experience.

Commenting on Imerge’s partnership with GD3 Data, Charlie Mertz, Imerge’s Business Development Manager, said: “Imerge is committed to providing the most complete media server experience available, and for that reason we are partnering with GD3 Data to add cover art and metadata layering alongside content delivered by the AMG database. The combination of these two market leading partners significantly improves the metadata hit rate across the world, enhancing coverage, giving access to higher quality cover art and allowing customers to add images and information for media that does not currently ‘look up’.”

Doug Strachota, co-founder and CEO of GD3 Data, added: “This partnership between Imerge and GD3 represents a significant turning point in the market, where the server manufacturer is now taking an active role in metadata creation and correction. GD3 has been continuing to invest in tools and processes to provide our customers with more control and ownership – the one key element of their interface where traditionally they had little or no input.”

Imerge Partners with GD3 Data: Key Benefits

• Improved coverage worldwide through GD3/AMG layering, creating the most
comprehensive metadata and cover art recognition system currently available.
• Improved high-resolution cover art – enjoy Imerge’s new MediaServer MS1 GUI
(Graphical User Interface) with hi-res cover images.
• Ability to submit missing data to the Imerge-GD3 database.
o Once data is submitted, it is immediately available to all Imerge media servers.
o Erroneous entries can be corrected (proposed changes will be reviewed before
being accepted to the database).
o Ability to add regionally specific metadata and cover art to the database
(Chinese, Russian, Greek etc). This can be achieved through a range of search
methods integrated into the submission tool, making the addition of metadata
very easy.
o Search tools include UPC (barcode), text search, actors search for specific
movies and so on.
o Submission tool can also connect to range of digital scanners to scan and
upload cover art.

Imerge’s partnership with GD3 Data is effective immediately. Imerge end-users will benefit from access to cover art and metadata via the GD3 database from this month. The Imerge-GD3 submission tool is also available now from Imerge and GD3 Data.

www.imerge.co.uk