Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The global video business lost more than $2.6bn in 2008 due to a combination of a fall in both DVD purchase and rentals by consumers. The figure equates to a downturn of 4.8 percent globally, according... Read more...
Independent publishers and replicators, especially in Europe, will be breathing easier at the announcement by the AACS organisation that it has significantly reduced its license fees. It will cutting ... Read more...
Its large booth at the recent MEDIATECH fair in Frankfurt belied the fact that optical media test equipment maker AudioDev was in serious trouble. Last week, the Swedish company filed for bankruptcy, ... Read more...
'Digital Britain', the much-anticipated report commissioned to Communications minister Lord Carter of Barnes by the UK government, has given the communications regulator Ofcom new powers to monitor and... Read more...
Device manufacturers are solving technology challenges and forging new partnerships with content and service providers to make web TV a reality. The success of early ventures such as Microsoft’s Xbox... Read more...
In the first blow to the new bill fighting illegal downloads, passed last month by the French National Assembly, the French Constitutional Council rejected a key provision that would have given a newly... Read more...
Researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have demonstrated how nanotechnology can enable the creation of 'five dimensional' discs with huge storage capacities... Read more...
Advanced Access Content System License Authority’s final agreements include a mandatory management-copy provision, under which most Blu-ray discs must permit copies to be made, albeit under carefully... Read more...
FS Film Oy, one of Finland's leading film and video distributors, is to release next month its first Blu-ray Disc, with BonusView features. Ganes, directed by JP Siili and produced by Helsinki... Read more...
On 11 June, the DVD6C, the licensing group made up of nine leading developers of DVD technology and formats, celebrated its 10th anniversary... Read more...
The MEDIA-TECH Association announce the formation of a new executive committee, which will be comprised of the main independent replicators with a European presence. The new committee is chaired by Michael... Read more...
Sony DADC is introducing into the European market its Digital Copy solution which enables one-click digital file transfer to other devices such as laptop computers, games consoles and portable media devices... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has formed a 3-D task force made up of members from the motion picture, consumer electronics and IT sectors, to ease “the integration of 3-D technology into the Blu... Read more...
Toshiba has announced it filed a lawsuit on May 14 with the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin to charge US-based optical disc vendor Imation as well as several manufacturers and ... Read more...
Germany recorded a five-fold increase in Blu-ray player sales in the first three months of 2009, compared to the same period last year, according to Bundesverband Audiovisuelle Medien (BVV) – Germany... Read more...
First-quarter US sales of stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players increased 72% over the same period in 2008, according to the March update of The NPD Group’s retail tracking report, quoted by TWICE... 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.
