Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Streamed TV is becoming more mainstream in the UK with the use of online streaming services such as BBC iplayer, ITV iplayer or 4oD on the rise, particularly among younger people, according to the latest... Read more...
US consumer rental of movies in DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats fell by 11% in 2011 and the landscape of retailers has shifted dramatically, according to market analyst The NPD Group. The leader in physical... Read more...
The individuals running Megaupload, the world's largest hosting site for pirated content, were arrested yesterday in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities, who executed provisional arrest ... Read more...
By Christmas 2012, most major theatrical releases will be UltraViolet enabled, giving consumers 'any time, anywhere' access to their favourite films. IHS Screen Digest Senior Analysts HELEN DAVIS JAYALATH... Read more...
The 130-year old, 1,100 digital patent-owning company that invented the hand-held camera and helped bring the first pictures from the Moon, has filed for bankruptcy protection... Read more...
TED, a non-profit organisation bringing together leading lights from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design with "ideas worth spreading,"has announced a DVD-On-Demand service... Read more...
Founded twelve years ago by Michael Gutowski, Infodisc Technology, based in Renchen, Germany, became the first independent Blu-ray disc replicator in Europe when it installed BD lines in 2007, the year... Read more...
After a successful set of predictions made a year ago, Strategy Analytics' Digital Consumer team once again presents its thoughts on the likely highlights of the coming 12 months. Here are the twelve ... Read more...
Technicolor has unveiled a free app, M-GO, that offers cloud-based streaming rental or download to own from movie catalogues from participating Hollywood studios yet to be announced... Read more...
The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has started an investigation of Blu-ray disc players and devices that incorporate BD-Live (Profile 2.0) features and/or BonusView (Profile 1.1... Read more...
It fits Sweden, the nation that gave birth to the world's largest file-sharing website, Pirate Bay, that its government should formally recognise the right to file-sharing as a fully-fledged religion... Read more...
Samsung's 2012 Blu-ray Disc players will include a new Disc-to-Digital feature, developed by Rovi and Flixster, that will allow consumers to add their existing Blu-ray Disc and DVD libraries from participating... Read more...
Dutch technology company Dimenco, a leader in the field of auto-stereoscopic displays, has announced its new Rendering Core Premium technology for glasses-free 3D displays at CES 2012... Read more...
More than 750,000 households have registered with UltraViolet to create and start using personal digital libraries, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) has revealed at the 2012 International... Read more...
French pay TV operator Canal Plus is to axe its 3D channel after 18 months of operation following low consumer take up. The service, which kicked off in June 2010 in time for the Football World Cup, will... Read more...
Sales of Blu-ray movies rose 20% over 2010 to top $2bn in sales for the first time since its launch in 2006, according to The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG). Total consumer spending on home filmed ... 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.
