Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
To service Japan’s serial recording consumers, Sony unveiled four new Blu-ray disc recorders with high capacity HDD... Read more...
Czech police have shut down a computer server being used to illegally store and upload large amounts of copyright infringing music and film onto the internet... Read more...
Q4 in 2007 is seen as a crucial time in the life of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc, as it is the second Christmas period for both formats in the USA – long highlighted by Understanding & Solutions as ... Read more...
In what may be the final chapter in the search for a buyer, Dicentia has acquired ODS’s Dassow plant in Germany. The administrators have chosen the Danish optical disc group – associated for the occasion... Read more...
Venturer Electronics has announced that it will launch its HD-DVD player to the US market in time for the Christmas and Winter shopping holidays at a retail price “expected to be one of the lowest among... Read more...
The DVD Association has announced the winners of the 2008 DVDA Excellence Awards, presented at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles. This is the industry’s oldest DVD awards programme and ... Read more...
Toshiba and Microsoft have announced the formation of the Advanced Interactivity Consortium (AIC), an open forum aimed at the promotion of advanced interactivity for a wide range of next-generation consumer... Read more...
During the Intel Information Technology Summit of 2008 in China last month, Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Haier announced the introduction of its "Blue Box (Lan _Bao) V9", a Blu-ray device... Read more...
A special tactical operations unit consisting of 300 police officers from the Gendarmería, Argentina's equivalent of a Homeland Security Agency, acted on several search warrants earlier this month, seizing... Read more...
While many people expected sales of Blu-ray disc players to spike when Toshiba decided to drop out of the high-definition HD DVD market in February 2008, according to a new Harris Poll, it seems that ... Read more...
Last week, Twentieth Century Fox added a layer of copyright protection technology – BD+ – to its Blu-ray discs, a necessity brought about because hackers had recently broken the digital rights management... Read more...
Hong Kong-based InfoSmart Group has closed a $5 million commercial loan with two institutional investors to finance the development of Blu-ray sales and marketing efforts in their local and international... Read more...
German replicator CDA Datenträger Albrechts has teamed up with Brooks Automation UPM Raflatac RFID business and Stora Enso Digital Solutions to offer a optical disc product complete with Electronic Product... Read more...
CMC Magnetics and Ritek, the top two Taiwan-based producers of optical discs, as well as Prodisc Technology, a second-tier maker, are unwilling to invest in large-scale production of either Blu-ray Disc... Read more...
The BBC, NHK of Japan and RAI of Italy are to collaborate on a unique demonstration at the IBC2008 fair in Amsterdam in September with international links of Super Hi-Vision, the system which combines... Read more...
DEG Europe, the pan-industry body to promote DVD and HD formats to consumers and trade across Europe, has revealed that the DVD industry remains buoyant in Europe and continues to go from strength to ... 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.
