Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Adult publishers Larry Flynt (Hustler) and Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild) are asking the US government for a $5 billion bailout, claiming the adult entertainment industry is suffered badly from the economic... Read more...
The WirelessHD Consortium, a membership of leading consumer electronic and PC manufacturers, announced that the WirelessHD Compliance Test Specification (CTS) version 1.0 is now available to WirelessHD... Read more...
Monitoring firm comScore released November 2008 data from its Video Metrix service showing that US Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 34 percent... Read more...
The CEO of Seattle-based RealNetworks, Rob Glaser, is still confident that people will eventually be able to use the company's RealDVD software to copy DVDs to their personal computers... Read more...
Shorewood Packaging and Blueprint Media, a UK design firm, has formed a new company – Shorewood.blueprint – to provide home entertainment companies in Europe with a comprehensive offering of service... Read more...
India’s Moser Baer has received product verification from the Blu-ray Disc Association for its BDR 1x-6x discs. With this certification, Moser Baer claims to be the first company outside Japan to develop... Read more...
Universal’s Mamma Mia! - The Movie officially became the UK’s fastest-selling DVD in history, achieving sales of 3.1 million in its first full week in the shops, and 5.1 million by the end of 2008... Read more...
Blu-ray Partners France announces that more than 1.36 million Blu-ray movies had been sold in France by the end of November, which represents an increase of 447% growth in year-to-date. The French Blu... Read more...
LG Electronics extended its groundbreaking partnership with movie-renter Netflix, as the two companies announced the first broadband-enabled HDTVs with Netflix streaming software embedded directly in ... Read more...
While several large Chinese consumer electronics makers and vendors plan to launch devices supporting the home grown China Blue High-definition Disc format (CBHD), no Taiwan-based makers of optical disc... Read more...
Responding to news reports that the Blu-ray Disc industry has successfully countered its BD+ hacking software, Antigua-based Slysoft says its new version of AnyDVD HD has once again broken the latest ... Read more...
Los Angeles and Sheffield, UK-based ZOO Digital, maker of Who Wants to be a Millionaire video games, posted its first ever profit after strong demand for its DVDs... Read more...
North Korean authorities are reportedly cracking down on DVDs of South Korean TV dramas and radio receivers that can tune into South Korean broadcasts to stem the Korean pop culture wave that has belatedly... Read more...
Increasing sales of pirated CDs, DVDs and other software in India has led to manufacturers in Delhi to lose around Rs 5 billion ($103m) annually, said a report by an industry lobby released last week... Read more...
Hard disc drive manufacturers are rapidly losing market share to flash memory suppliers and need to commit to advanced high density technologies to avoid further loses and consolidation, according to ... Read more...
Denon is planning to release its long-awaited top-of-the-line universal Blu-ray player, the DVD-A1UD, in March 2009, playing also Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, DVD-Video and CDs... 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.
... Read More...
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.
