Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
French National Assembly lawmakers passed on Tuesday the so-called Création and Internet bill that would cut the Internet connections of those who repeatedly download music and films illegally. The Senat... Read more...
According to reports coming from Japan, NEC LCD Technologies is planning to bring to the market sometime next year a new 3D TFT LCD screen that does not require special glasses while maintaining the high... Read more...
German authoring and production house Imagion pushed BD-Live’s technology and creative envelope in turning the release of Star Trek Season 1 boxset into a “mind-blowing” interactive event if we ... Read more...
The Amergence Group, whose Tranzbyte division focuses on the development and marketing of optical and solid state media enhancement technologies such as DVCD, CDMX, and FlashCDMX for DVDs, CDs, and Flash... Read more...
The European market for consumer electronics will probably contract in 2009 by around 9% and reach a total turnover value of €62 billion. This is the first consumer electronics market downturn since... Read more...
Universal Pictures (UK) again topped the list of winners at the annual British Video Association Awards, picking up four awards for Marketing Initiatives in Film and Special Interest as well as winning... Read more...
Three weeks after its rejection by a handful of deputies, the law Creation et Liberté – aimed at clamping down on the illegal downloading of copyrighted material – was brought back before the French... Read more...
GE Global Research, the R&D arm of General Electric, announced Monday it has successfully demonstrated a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity... Read more...
Hamburg-based Enteractive, one of Europe’s pioneer BD production studios, demonstrated for the first time at MEDIATECH its BD-Live Video on Demand service 'Videociety' – a digital pay-per-view video... Read more...
Earlier this month, the Regional Court of Hamburg has issued a preliminary injunction against the DVD FLLC claim that the 0.6mm disc is a violation of the DVD FLLC license agreement and can result in ... Read more...
RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser told a San Francisco Court on Tuesday in his ongoing legal battle against the motion picture industry that his company’s RealDVD – a DVD-copying software – is not designed... Read more...
Copy-protection provider Fortium Technologies has signed a new OEM partner, Microboards Technology, who will distribute Patronus DVD anti rip copy protection software through its disc publishing solutions... Read more...
London’s premier media and motion graphic production company, The Pavement, has secured major new investment from Goldcrest Group – one of the largest independent film production and post production... Read more...
Chinese manufacturers last week launched high-definition discs and players based on the China Blue High-Definition (CBHD) standard, intensifying the next generation disc format war in the world's most... Read more...
“The fundamentals of our business are still viable, but let’s not be complacent,” enjoins David Bishop, President, Worldwide, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, in his PEVE keynote address to 250... Read more...
Warner Bros is still thinking about those customers who bought HD DVD discs as the studio set up a scheme to get them to transition to the Blu-ray experience... 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.
