Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
By 2018, active UltraViolet accounts (those with multiple movies) could exceed 65 million worldwide - up from the estimated 6 to 8 million at present and depending on the action from key holdouts the ... Read more...
One in six (18%) UK internet users aged 12+ consumed at least one item of online content illegally over the three-month period November 2012 - January 20134. Around a third of these (5%) exclusively consumed... Read more...
In a consumer survey conducted in five countries in Europe and the USA, more than a third of respondents were interested in buying a smart-TV set, but of the one in five respondents who claimed to own... Read more...
Growth in Blu-ray Disc sales to Belgian consumers continued to rise from 1.2 million units in 2011 to 1.5 million in 2012, according to IHS Screen Digest analysis of data published by the Belgian Entertainment... Read more...
One-Blue, the one-stop shop for patent licenses from the leading providers of Blu-ray Disc technology, announced that it and certain One-Blue patent owners have filed suit against Imation Corp. for infringing... Read more...
New figures released today by the British Video Association show that 88% of the British population know they now can make a one-off payment to download and view a film or TV show on their tablet or smart... Read more...
Sydney-based Access Digital Entertainment's online DVD sales company EzyDVD is debuting Ultraviolet access in Australia with the soft launch this month of video-on-demand EzyFlix.tv. It enables customers... Read more...
In a move that echoes the UK's www.FindAnyFilm.com, now under the stewardship of the Industry Trust for IP Awareness, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has unveiled www.WheretoWatch.org... Read more...
Europeans have become 'hybrid consumers,' enjoying films across multiple formats and platforms, says TONY GUNNARSSON, Senior Analyst at IHS Screen Digest. Last year, consumers in Western Europe spent ... Read more...
The 'three-strike graduated response' policy introduced in 2009 to combat illegal internet downloading ought to be relaxed and its administration transferred from Hadopi - to be abolished - to the domestic... Read more...
In the first quarter of the year, News Corporation's flourishing digital distribution business and rising sales of Blu-ray Discs - that have offset most of the declines of DVD sales - have helped to stabilise... Read more...
While the industry seems to be hypnotised by 'the small 4K step for man,' Japanese public broadcaster NHK is more interested with 'the giant 8K leap for mankind.' Working with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation... Read more...
Electronics and home video retailer Saturn has announced the closure of two of the six stores currently operating in Switzerland, with the remaining four set to be re-branded as Media Markt locations. ... Read more...
Toshiba is launching a range of TVs that integrate Rovi's DivX Plus Streaming technology. This agreement will help increase the reach of Rovi's advanced adaptive streaming format and enable Toshiba DTVs... Read more...
Packaged media is weathering the digital 'onslaught' rather well - indeed is picking up after five years of downward trend - if we go by figures released by DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group. Overall... Read more...
Figures just released by the British Video Association show that the market for video entertainment grew by 10.1 % in value across physical and digital formats, as consumers spent £536.3 million... 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.
