Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
With merchants already gearing up for the busy holiday shopping season, One-Blue has developed a series of guidelines for consumer goods retailers to help them comply with a licensing, registration and... Read more...
South Korean researchers from Seoul National University have developed a new technology that could enable 3D cinema to be viewed without glasses. In an academic paper published in 'Optics Express,' they... Read more...
Despite accelerating global demand for smart TVs, a new report from TDG forecasts that TV manufacturers will be largely unsuccessful in generating new revenue from these net-connected platforms... Read more...
Only 11% of US customers who purchase a high definition television do so because of its 3D capabilities, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 latest report. The 'HDTV Satisfaction Report' examines... Read more...
UK supermaket chain Sainsbury's has licensed the Rovi Entertainment Store to power a new over-the-top video service. Expected to launch later this year, the movie storefront will reinforce Sainsbury's... Read more...
The rise of 'second screening' - the use of other screens, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets while watching TV - is a source of excitement and concern for many in the TV and technology industry... Read more...
One year in the planning, Germany's leading-edge Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute is to officially open its 3D Innovation Center on 28 August, followed by a 3D Innovation Day at Berlin's International... Read more...
To better serve the growing global theatrical, television, video game, and mobile 3D marketplace and professional community, the International 3D Society and the 3D@Home Consortium announced plans to ... Read more...
In the US, rentals of DVDs and Blu-ray discs from kiosks, brick-and-mortar retailers, and Netflix Movies by Mail accounted for 62% of movie rental orders during the first half of this year. Digital movie... Read more...
Warner Bros. Entertainment is closing its direct-to-video division in light of ongoing fall in profit in the home video industry, parent company Time Warner announced this week. Founded in 2006, Warner... Read more...
Toronto-based global replicator and supply-chain service provider Cinram - recently sold to investment house Najafi Companies - reported a net loss for the second quarter of 2012 of $91.8m. The corresponding... Read more...
A website owner who created and ran one of the world?s most popular pirate websites has been sentenced to four years imprisonment at Newcastle Crown Court, in the UK... Read more...
B.R. Productions & Packaging GmbH has joined the One-Blue product licensing programme as a licensee. The German company, located at Gorlitz (East Saxony), will now have access to patents essential to ... Read more...
Polls conducted amongst its 6,000+ members by XBIZ.net, an online social network for adult entertainment industry executives and qualified stakeholders, indicated a more conservative attitude towards ... Read more...
The European Commission has informed thirteen companies supplying optical disk drives in the European Economic Area of its preliminary view that they may have infringed EU antitrust rules by participating... Read more...
The British creative industries need to play a key role in leading and funding the Copyright Hub, a marketplace for rights to streamline copyright licensing and make transactions easier for creators, ... 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.
