Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies

Features

Back to business!

Even though our website activities were on the back burner for over a year while we reshaped our operations, professionals from nearly 50 countries have kept logging in to tap into fifteen years of archives that uniquely chronicle the birth, the life, but not yet the death, of packaged media. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of JEAN NOEL FOURNILLIER, CEO of specialist packaging solutions Novobox. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of STEVE BROWN, CEO of Cinram. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of ARNO WEGER, Managing Director, kdg mediascope GmbH in Austria. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of SYLVIA HITZEL, VP Marketing & Sales of Singulus Technologies. Read More...

DVD and Beyond 2015

Welcome to the new edition of our annual magazine, the informative, inquisitive, and at times irreverent companion to www.dvd-and-beyond.com, our industry website. Time flies. With this issue, we celebrate 20 years of service to the packaged media industry. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of SVEN DEUTSCHMANN, CEO of arvato Replication, in Germany. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of ED HALL, Operations Manager of UK commercial broadcaster Channel 4. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of MICHAEL HOSP, CEO of kdg Mediatech, a replication, authoring and fulfilment company based in Austria. Read More...

An industry executive speaks

In a series of Q&As, frontline practitioners in all facets of the packaged media and digital delivery industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of LEON KOHLEN, CEO of Dutch authoring and post-production company i-Frame. Read More...

North Korea embraces 4D cinema

If you thought North Korea was impervious to western entertainment technology, think again. The seclusive Communist state released a promotional video highlighting visitor experiences at the recently-opened Runga 4D Simulation Cinema Read More...

BBC's Lesley Johnson sets sail for Children in Need

Lesley Johnson, Operations Director at BBC Consumer Products, will take part in the Clipper Round The World Yacht Race in aid of Children in Need. Read More...

55% of Europeans would buy Ultra HDTV

Following his post from CES back in January, DAVID MERCER, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics, says that more positive news for UHD TV emerges after they have completed the weighting of the latest European survey data in the firm's ConsumerMetrix service. Read More...

Cloud control - Transforming creative and production process management

Consumers' insatiable appetite for localised filmed and TV entertainment has led to enormous challenges for producers and distributors alike to deliver huge volumes of content. STUART GREEN, CEO of ZOO Digital, says the answer lies in the Cloud. Read More...

Do Curved OLED TVs distort the picture?

Amongst the many TV-related themes at CES 2014 was the widespread entry of curved TV screens. Widespread, at least, in the sense that most major TV vendors were showing curved models, without necessarily committing to launch dates or pricing. DAVID MERCER, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics, muses on the nature of this new product Read More...

On predicting the future

Predicting the future, let alone the future of packaged media, is a perilous exercise, and possibly counter-productive, as the exercise closes doors rather than keep them open, argues JEAN-LUC RENAUD, DVD Intelligence publisher. Consider that: Apple was left nearly for dead 15 years ago. Today, it became the world's most valuable technology company, topping Microsoft.

Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir (the cinema is an invention without any future) famously claimed the Lumière Brothers some 120 years ago. Well. The cinématographe grew into a big business, even bigger in times of economic crisis when people have little money to spend on any other business.

The advent of radio, then television, was to kill the cinema. With a plethora of digital TV channels, a huge DVD market, a wealth of online delivery options, a massive counterfeit underworld and illegal downloading on a large scale, cinema box office last year broke records!

The telephone was said to have no future when it came about. Today, 5 billion handsets are in use worldwide. People prioritize mobile phones over drinking water in many Third World countries.

No-one predicted the arrival of the iPod only one year before it broke loose in an unsuspecting market. Even fewer predicted it was going to revolutionise the economics of music distribution. Likewise, no-one saw the iPhone coming and even fewer forecast the birth of the developers' industry it ignited. And it changed the concept of mobile phone.

Make no mistake, the iPad will have a profound impact on the publishing world. It will bring new players, and smaller, perhaps more creative content creators.

And who predicted the revival of vinyl?

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