Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The number of pirated audio CDs and DVDs seized at Czech market places dropped by 44 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year, according to the dnational office of the International Federation... Read more...
Rising demand for children’s DVD and Blu-ray has bolstered sales, according to figures issued by the British Video Association, as supplied by data from the Official Charts Company. This year to date... Read more...
Toshiba Corporation has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format... Read more...
Four members of a criminal network involved in a multi-million pound film piracy 'industry' in the UK have been jailed for a total of 18 years. The gang provided a 'one stop shop' supply service for other... Read more...
Since hitting China’ high streets in April, the home-grown high-definition disc format CBHD is forging ahead of Blu-ray. So far, CBHD players are outselling Blu-ray players 3-to-1, according to Japanese... Read more...
Representatives of nearly all the Italian replicators and related services providers formed the Italian Optical Disc Forum with the goal of “opening a discussion and working out strategies to get through... Read more...
London, Soho-based award-winning authoring and digital production facility The Pavement, boasting a decade in the industry at the forefront of DVD and Blu-ray, is set to increase its already popular mobile... Read more...
Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced a plan to deliver an extensive array of iPhone and iPod touch-enabled BD-Live features on its upcoming Blu-ray releases that can be accessed via companion... Read more...
Strategy Analytics has predicted that the global paid online video segment will reach $3.8 billion in subscription income in 2009, and exceed the free online video segment, which is expected to generate... Read more...
Three out of five UK adults don’t believe that musicians should profit from their singles and music videos being downloaded online, according to a survey of 2,000 adults carried out for network integration... Read more...
Toshiba has decided to enter the Blu-ray Disc market with BD players planned for the end of the year, according to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Initially reluctant to embrace Sony's winning hi-... Read more...
Consumer spending for the first half of 2009 in the home entertainment window for pre-recorded entertainment, which includes DVD, Blu-ray Disc and digital distribution, was $9.73 billion, off by 3.9 percent... Read more...
Macrovision Solutions is officially changing its name today to Rovi Corporation and unveiled its new brand positioning and visual identity to highlight the company’s evolution as a digital entertainment... Read more...
The French video publishers association SEVN welcomes the two-year deal under which films will be available on DVD (and pay-per-view video-on-demand) just four months – in some cases just three months... Read more...
MPEG LA, LLC, the international one-stop patent licensor, announced the offering of a new MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License that will provide uninterrupted coverage for the life of the MPEG-2 essential ... Read more...
Over the next five years, digital technologies will become increasingly widespread across all segments of entertainment & media (E&M) as the digital migration continues to expand according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers... Read more...
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.
Though our service brief has been including coverage of new content delivery channels for several years, there is still enough activity on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc front – globally – on which to focus our reporting energy, especially as 4K UHD seems to be gathering pace.
While our company, Globalcom Ltd, remains based in the UK, we are running the website afresh from South Korea! Always looking for new challenges and a desire to share widely the knowledge gained, I took up a faculty position at Hannam University’s Linton School of Global Business (in Daejeon) where I teach globalization and communication technology courses.
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TECHNICOLOR has posted its results for the full year 2016. Group revenues increased by 34.8% at constant currency, reflecting the change in scale of Connected Home and Entertainment Services. The two segments combined recorded revenue growth of 48.2% year-on-year at constant rate resulting from the contribution of the acquisitions completed in 2015 and double digit organic growth in Production Services activities.
VODAFONE SPAIN is launching a new 4K TV service with 5 TV channels (10 by year end ) and VoD content for subscribers with convergent packages, like Vodafone One. The five new channels are Odisea 4K, Festival 4K, FunBox UHD, Insight TV and Slow Channel – and one 4K transmission of the best football match of La Liga every week. The company will be the first in the country to offer 4K VoD content with 850 titles including films, TV series and documentaries.
APPLE will make its first forays into original content in the “next few months”, according to Eddy Cue, the company’s SVP of internet software and services. Speaking at the Code Media conference in California, Cue revealed that Carpool Karaoke and Planet Of The Apps will become available “in most countries in the world” on Apple TV. Mac and iOS devices as part of Apple Music, the company’s subscription music offering.
MPEG LA ANNOUNCED that several patent owners in MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License have filed patent enforcement actions in the Landgericht Düsseldorf, Germany, against both Huawei Technologies Deutschland GmbH and ZTE Deutschland GmbH for infringing patents essential to the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard used in mobile devices and other products. According to the complaints, Huawei and ZTE offer mobile phone products in Germany, which use patent-protected AVC methods without licenses with the individual patent holders or a portfolio license that includes these patents offered by MPEG LA. The suits seek monetary damages and injunctions.
DELUXE is to close its UK restoration operation at the end of March with the potential loss of 12 jobs.Recent projects worked on include the nine surviving silent Alfred Hitchcock films for the BFI. In 2015, the department won the Best Archive Restoration award at the 2015 Focal International Awards for its work on Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection for Arrow Films. The division was formed in 2011 through the merger of Deluxe Digital London (DDL) and Deluxe 142’s restoration operations following Deluxe’s acquisition of Ascent Media. Deluxe said it would maintain its restoration facilities in Madrid, Spain and Los Angeles, US.
MOBILE and desktop video consumption are running virtually neck-and-neck, with 86% of consumers saying they watch video on smartphones and other mobile devices, compared to 70% on desktops, AOL found in a fresh study that tracked usage trends across seven global regions. Additionally, 57% of consumers watch videos on a mobile phone every day, compared to 58% on desktops and laptops.
