Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
In a world first, media packaging supplier Novobox is launching a DVD/Blu-ray Disc box solution that works in tandem with an Augmented Reality application to access material related to the content... Read more...
Figures presented at last week's 'Consumers, Content and Change Across the Video Category' event, hosted in London by the British Video Association (BVA) and supported by Entertainment Retailers Association... Read more...
The UK government has launched a consultation seeking views on equalising the maximum custodial sentence for online and physical copyright infringement at ten years, now that online infringement is so... Read more...
Sony DADC has announced a partnership agreement with UK-based VDC Group. Under the agreement, Sony DADC and VDC Group customers in the UK will benefit from a range of enhanced offerings, covering end-... Read more...
Successes in marketing and communications were celebrated last month at the British Video Association's 2015 BVA Awards, at the Tobacco Dock, London. The past year has seen significant change within marketing... Read more...
Finding a place for physical media in the digital age is the theme that dominated the MEDIA-TECH conference in Hamburg in mid-May. It brought together some 100 participants from 18 countries to discuss... Read more...
Colonial Purchasing Cooperative's newsletter, Physical World, has been tracking the DVD and Blu-ray patents that expire this year. While identifying the patents concerned via a questionnaire, none... Read more...
While UK views watched content for an average of 5 hours a day across a host of devices and platforms - on catch-up and streaming services, in home and out of home, on the move and on mobile phones, on... Read more...
While blocking solely The Pirate Bay piracy website caused no increase in the adoption of legal distribution services for digital movies and television, simultaneously blocking 19 major such websites ... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) announced completion of the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification and released the new logo that will identify Ultra HD Blu-ray products. The Ultra HD Blu-ray specification... Read more...
During the first year of Blu-ray Discs' commercial availability in 2006, there were 135 titles released, according to data from home entertainment tracking service 'The DVD & Blu-ray Disc Release Report... Read more...
A further 11 vigilant staff members from cinemas across the UK have been recognised for successfully intervening to prevent the illegal recording, or 'camming,' of films under the Film Distributors' Association... Read more...
Into receivership since February 2014, French replicator QOL, first to install Blu-ray disc manufacturing capabilities in Europe back in 2006, has been acquired by Media Industry, owner of kdg France... Read more...
Sony DADC has confirmed to Music Business Worldwide that it is to close its main plant in Mexico, as well as its head office in Costa Rica as a result of ongoing global cost-cutting measures from... Read more...
2014 marks the first time in the Belgian video entertainment market when revenues generated by digital services VOD, SVOD and Electronic Sell-Through (EST) surpassed those from physical media - DVD and... Read more...
Scenarist, the developer of Hollywood-standard professional Blu-ray Disc authoring, has launched the UHDG, a global focus group of high-end authoring facilities, technology companies and service providers... 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.
