Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Global Digital Media Xchange, a Warner Bros Entertainment Company, has selected Sonic Solution's Scenarist HDMV and BD-J authoring and CineVision AVC video encoding systems to increases its Blu-ray Disc... Read more...
New Medium Enterprises is introducing in India its HD VMD high definition player along with HD Bollywood content in Hindi, Tamil, English and gradually in all regional languages, at the Times AV Revolution... Read more...
The German Blu-ray Association has releases new figures from the GfK market research group showing Blu-ray discs took 85% of the German high-definition video disc market in the sixth week of the year, ... Read more...
One of Poland’s leading replicators, GM Records Marek Grela, has filed a motion for bankruptcy with the District Court in Warsaw on 29 February with a view to protect future business activities while... Read more...
Launched as a criminal case against the operators of a file-sharing portal site, intensive investigations by Germany's Frankfurt am Main criminal investigation department have inflicted a successful blow... Read more...
Nearly six weeks after Toshiba decided to cease support for the DVD Forum-anointed HD DVD format of which it was the lead developer, the HD DVD Promotion Group officially dissolved last Friday. A short... Read more...
The closure of two of Germany's HDTV channels in recent weeks has cast a shadow over European hopes for a rapid transition to High Definition Television, according to analysis published by the Strategy... Read more...
Hollywood technical service provider Javelin Ventures will be handling the training and support of German company sofatronic’s Kaleidoscope system to motion picture post-production facilities in the... Read more...
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, copyright protection solutions provider Macrovision announced it has sold its loss-making games digital rights management unit, Trymedia, to RealNetworks... Read more...
MPEG LA, the global alternative one-stop patent licenses administrator, announced that seven DVD Video disc replicators have become Licensees to MPEG LA’s MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License in conclusion... Read more...
NetBlender has announced that it will release its first Blu-Ray authoring package shortly after April's NAB show... Read more...
Christophe Geoffroy, International Non Food Director, Carrefour is to speak at PEVE Digital Entertainment 2008, thus completing a quartet of keynote speakers including Ron Sanders, President of Warner... Read more...
Columbia University Professor Emeritus Gertrude Neumark Rothschild says 30 companies are infringing on her patent for laser and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In response, she wants the U.S. government... Read more...
Sony has released the next software update for its gaming console, PlayStation 3, which adds Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0 capabilities, turning the game console into the first Blu-ray player to support full... Read more...
While Samsung launched its Super-WriteMaster SH-S223 22x DVD burner (pictured) in early March 2008 and LG Electronics will follow suit with its latest Super Multi series GH22, in the second quarter of... Read more...
On-demand media (ODM) services, sometimes referred to as manufacturing-on-demand, will generate $33m in incremental spending this year in the US and the major European markets, and be worth $1.1bn in ... 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.
