Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
For every dollar kids (ages 2-14) spend on entertainment content, $0.79 goes to physical format content and $0.21 goes towards digital format content. This is a noticeable shift towards digital acquisition... Read more...
California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 550 (Padilla), a new law aimed at helping reduce music and movie piracy by allowing inspections and verification to ensure that large-scale disc replicating plants... Read more...
Sony Creative Software, a global provider of professional video editing, music creation and optical disc authoring solutions, has acquired NetBlender, a developer of prosumer Blu-ray Disc authoring tools... Read more...
Contrary to the traditional views of the music industry, removal of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions can actually decrease piracy, according to new research from Rice University and... Read more...
Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox are forming a commercial alliance designed to boost the distribution of DVD and Blu-ray discs in Brazil. A new company will then emerge, to be named Fox-Sony Pictures... Read more...
Sony DADC has announced the establishment of PlayStation3 media manufacturing services in Russia. After entering the Russian home entertainment market with a strategic acquisition of a CD/DVD manufacturing... Read more...
The International Telecommunication Union’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development has agreed on a set of four 'ambitious, but achievable' new targets that countries around the world should strive... Read more...
In Hong Kong, a 32-year-old man was sentenced to ten months in prison, following his earlier conviction on three charges of making and selling pirated movie discs through his own Internet website. It ... Read more...
Media packaging suppliers AGI has added lenticular technology to its range of print capabilities. It utilises a magnifying plastic lense, creating an illusion of depth thus giving the printed image a ... Read more...
Experts at the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union say they have reached agreement on most of the pertinent technical characteristics of the Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) format... Read more...
Now that 3D has broken into the market, what form will it take within the home? Will it be accessed on-demand or through a dedicated channel, streamed via IP or through a set-top box or Blu-ray Disc player... Read more...
The DVD/Internet movie-rental company Netflix announced that it was abandoning its move to split into two businesses, following consumer outcry. Three weeks ago, CEO Reed Hastings announced plans to split... Read more...
In a survey carried out by Spain’s Consumers and Users Organisation (OCU), nearly three out of four respondents who already own a 3DTV set claim the experience is significantly better than watching ... Read more...
Amazon gave Cinram and its client, Universal Pictures GAS, the Golden Pallet Award, during the internet retailer’s 2011 Vendor Day. The award recognises excellence in the field of logistics... Read more...
Sony will stop paying for the 3D glasses issued to US moviegoers, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Currently, cinemas showing the studios' 3D films provide RealD-supplied glasses subsidised... Read more...
Borders joins Tower Records and Virgin Megastore in the has-been entertainment retail chain category, while HMV attempts to reorganise. LARRY JAFFEE surveys the remaining bricks-and-mortar landscape on... 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.
... Read More...
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.
