Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The entertainment industry body the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) has added four new members: Intel, Allied Vaughn, Entertainment One and M-Go... Read more...
This week, the United States' five largest Internet service providers - AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon - started to implement their long-gestated anti-piracy programme. The so-called... Read more...
Despite a slump in the Japanese economy following the natural disasters in 2011, the Japanese 3D home video market is growing at a steady rate. Japan has always been a market at the forefront of adoption... Read more...
Entertainment in Video (EiV), one of the premier British independent home video distributors, is expanding its partnership with Sony DADC to full supply chain management for the UK and Ireland... Read more...
Bertelsmann Group's replication and outsourcing services provider arvato has signed an exclusive three-year partnership with European independent music group PIAS for supply chain services in the UK and... Read more...
China's rising labour costs and growing risks stemming from bilateral tensions prompt Japanese companies to move some operations to more inviting territories. A case in point is Funai Electric... Read more...
Technicolor announced a 'robust performance' in 2012 for the entire group, reporting a 2.2% rise in constant scope and currency to €3,580 million, from €3,450 million in 2012. The 2011 net loss... Read more...
The availability of numerous Hindi and Bollywood films will be added to FindAnyFilm.com, the gateway to legitimate film, TV and video services, as Sanona becomes the first in a host of new legal film ... Read more...
US consumer rental home video spending will outpace sell-though spending in 2013 - the first time since 2000 - predicts BTIG Research. In his blog, Richard Greenfield, an analysts with the firm, believes... Read more...
Taliban from the Khyber tribal region have warned shopkeepers in a popular market on the edge of Peshawar to stop selling 'obscene films,' reports Pakistan's Dawn.com... Read more...
DVDs are the most common means through which North Koreans access outside media. Nearly half of the respondents - North Koreans defectors and others - from 2010 and 2011 surveys and interviews collated... Read more...
Queen Elizabeth II made history by broadcasting her 2012 Christmas message in 3D. Behind-the-scene information has recently been released by Berlin-based leading 2D-to-3D conversion software and 3D post... Read more...
Mobile video consumption is finally becoming a mainstream activity after many years of trials, launches and commercial failures. London's Olympic Games 2012 demonstrates the trend, says IAN FOGG, Head... Read more...
Cinram Group Inc. (CGI), a newly-formed affiliate of Phoenix, Arizona-based Najafi Companies, has completed its acquisition of Cinram's European operations. Terms were not disclosed. CGI will continue... Read more...
AGI Amaray, the company that brought the well-known DVD and Blu-ray cases, is changing its name to ASG Amaray, following the merger in January 2012 between AGI World and Shorewood Packaging... Read more...
Despite new digital forms of movie distribution sales of Blu-ray discs and DVDs remain the largest source of revenue for the movie industry, accounting for 61% of home video spending on movies (excluding... 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.
