Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Austria's DaTARIUS, a leader in test equipment for the optical disc industry, as introduced a new tool to enable fast and precise testing for all kind of optical media in one unit - DaTARIUS iDS offline... Read more...
Continuing to expand its independent sales operation in Europe, Hannover-based Entertainment Distribution Company has appointed two new Sales Managers in the UK and the Benelux... Read more...
Physical video entertainment sales in the UK in December were up 8.4% in value to ?473.3 million on the same period last year, as highly anticipated hit titles were released in time for the gifting season... Read more...
Fans watching Glees: The Concert Movies on Blu-ray and DVD will see Shazam prompts on the screen alerting them to a Shazamable moment. Using their smartphones, they can "tag" the movie when ... Read more...
The wider choice of Blu-ray film titles and cheaper playback devices will help more Chinese consumers to enjoy them, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association China... Read more...
“We are in the business of enabling our customers to do more with their content to the extent that Rovi’s expanding range of solutions and technologies can provide them benefits,” says TONY KNIGHT... Read more...
While encouraging progress continues to be made in developing ZOO Digital’s products that address the eBooks and wider publishing markets, the turmoil and changing dynamics within the home entertainment... Read more...
A week after Tesco/Blinkbox launched their disc-cum-online service, the UK debut of the not-so-dissimilar UltraViolet initiative was announced, with Warner Bros’ Final Destination 5 going on... Read more...
The growing presence of online video has given rise to significant advances in the overall Russian home video market, with uptake in digital viewing triggering market forecasts in the region of 1000% ... Read more...
Replicators will be forgiven for thinking royalty-seeking bodies are making their life increasingly difficult with the arrival of yet another entity to deal with - One-Red. "It's a little complicated, ... Read more...
Fortium Technologies, a leading provider of content protection solutions for the film, entertainment and broadcast industries, has integrated Civolution’s NexGuard watermarking technology into its PIN... Read more...
UK supermarket giant Tesco and Blinkbox, the online video-on-demand movie supplier it controls, have announced a new service that gives buyers of its in-store DVD or Blu-ray movies access to the same ... Read more...
The King’s Speech, The Weinstein Company’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, will be the first feature film to deploy Technicolor’s MediaEcho second-screen viewing experience App... Read more...
Shares of one of Europe’s largest optical disc manufacturing and distribution company, Entertainment Distribution Company (EDC), were sold to new owner AEGIS GmbH on Wednesday... Read more...
In a judgement, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided that EU law precludes the imposition of an injunction by a national court which requires an internet service provider to install a filtering... Read more...
IMS Manufacturing, Italy’s leading optical disc manufacturer, called in the liquidators only five months after it restructured its operations. The workforce of 132, who demonstrated at the company’... 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.
