Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Consumers have never had so much choice and flexibility in how they watch movies and TV shows. A generation ago people had to plan ahead for when a particular broadcaster transmitted a movie at a particular... Read more...
A 39-year-old carpenter who lives in rural eastern France has become the first person ordered to pay a fine (€150) under France's anti-piracy three-strikes law known as Hadopi... Read more...
A group of Japanese companies is coming up with a new high-definition audio format designed for use with Blu-ray discs, dubbed High Resolution Audio. Membership of the Promotion Group for Blu-ray Disc... Read more...
Hot on the heels of its acquisition by investment house Najafi Companies, Toronto-based global replicator and supply-chain service provider Cinram is expanding into Manufacturing-on-Demand through a partnership... Read more...
Beginning with the Alien prequel Prometheus on 18 September, Twentieth Century Fox offers the digital downloads of new high-definition releases for $15 three weeks before the DVDs and Blu... Read more...
Osamu Kumagai, a senior VP at Sony, has won the 2012 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis in recognition of his work on the mass production of laser diodes used in successive generations of optical data storage... Read more...
US consumer spending on filmed entertainment on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats totaled $18 billion. Blu-ray grew 20% in 2011 and 23% in the first quarter of 2012, according to figures from the Entertainment... Read more...
FindAnyFilm.com, the website which helps connect UK-based movie fans with the films of their choice, will now come under the stewardship of the Industry Trust for IP Awareness to play an integral part... Read more...
Deluxe Media, a division of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc, announced the launch of their UltraViolet Common File Format (CFF) production services. These services are designed to provide studios... Read more...
ZOO, the provider of workflow management software and services for creative media production, has launched its new subtitling tool, ZOOsubs following extensive development and trialling... Read more...
In 2011, the migration of European video consumption from DVD to Blu-ray and digital platforms continued apace, carrying on in 2012. It echoes trends observed in the US and other world markets. Nonetheless... Read more...
Sony opened its newly-built UK distribution centre in Enfield, North London - a provider of around a quarter of the UK's home entertainment media - after the original building was destroyed by fire during... Read more...
California, North Hollywood-based Blu-ray testing and certification facility BluFocus has formed the BluFocusGroup, a division designed to assist software, website and mobile app developers, publishers... Read more...
Demonstrated in a London pub during the Olympic Games, Stream TV Networks' Ultra-D glasses-free 3D television should make a splash at Berlin's IFA where the Philadelphia-based company is unveiling a 60... Read more...
At Berlin's IFA, Rovi unveils a disc-to-digital copy solution to enable consumers to turn their physical DVD and Blu-ray Disc movie collections into virtual movie libraries. The Rovi Digital Copy for ... Read more...
LG Electronics has introduced the world's first 84-inch Ultra High Definition TV in the South Korean market. With 8 million pixels per frame, the 3D-capable UD3DTV features four times the resolution - ... 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.
