Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Figures released by the Digital Entertainment Group show that total US consumer spending topped $8.4bn in the first half of this year, compared to $8.3bn in the same period in 2011. The home video market... Read more...
Reflecting the continuing weakness in the UK's economy, the value of the overall video entertainment sector in the first half is down 6.8% - £898.7m in the first six months of 2012 down from £... Read more...
Stream TV Networks claims it has developed a revolutionary technology that delivers 'true and natural' glasses-free 3D images, absent of the distorted images consumers currently get with all attempts ... Read more...
Connected TV penetration in North America and Western Europe will surge from just over 10% in 2011 to over 50% by 2017, according to ABI Research. Blu-ray penetration is expected to have a similar progression... Read more...
Technological enhancement marches on in the autostereoscopic 3D corner of the immersive video market with the unveiling by Zero Creative of the world's brightest glasses-free 3D display... Read more...
Rovi's DivX Plus Streaming technology will be integrated into the 'UniPhier' series of digital television and Blu-ray Disc integrated circuit solutions from Panasonic's Semiconductor Business Group... Read more...
France's total revenue from DVD, Blu-ray and VOD fell 5% to €600m during the first half of the year, compared to €630m over the same period last year, according to GfK data collected for the... Read more...
Leading entertainment agency Premier PR has created a new integrated communications agency under the banner of PREMIER following the acquisition of post-production and digital media company Dubbs-Eyeframe... Read more...
Established by the leading Blu-ray, DVD and CD product IP holders, the patent pooling organisation One-Blue marked the first anniversary of its Blu-ray Disc product licensing programme on 1 July 2012... Read more...
Monetizing new methods of delivering content exercises the mind of studio executives as packaged media - still the industry's cash cow - keeps contracting. Disc-to-Digital, Digital Copy and Cloud-based... Read more...
Global shipments of LCD TVs are now expected to grow at a slower pace in 2012 than 2011, according to the latest Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report issued by NPD DisplaySearch. In... Read more...
A new research at the MIT Media Lab seeks to address the following challenge: As striking as it is, the illusion of depth now routinely offered by 3D movies is a paltry facsimile of a true three-dimensional... Read more...
Blu-ray 3D blockbusters like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Hobbit could be a significant force in sustaining 3D TV sales, together with a steady growth in the number of BD 3D titles entering... Read more...
Nearly 8 in 10 users who connect their Blu-ray Disc player to access online content download television shows and movies via Hulu, Netflix, and other subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services, compared... Read more...
The bill to revise the copyright law that cleared the Japanese Parliament (The Diet) on 20 June has confused many Internet users, especially over two major changes that take effect on 1 October... Read more...
Stereoscopic 3D viewing provides greater immersion, but can also lead to heightened visual and motion sickness symptoms. And if you are visually perturbed when watching 3D movies, take a seat on the last... 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.
