Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
German digital production studio Imagion is the first and so far only European authoring studio to receive Apple’s certification to produce compilation of iTunes Extras content for the iTunes Store... Read more...
The UK government should look beyond traditional policy tools to support the domestic film industry, according to the British Video Association’s submission to Department for Culture, Media and Sports... Read more...
Hewlett-Packard has joined the One-Blue product licensing programme as a licensor. HP has been a major contributor to the development of the Blu-ray Disc standard and joins current licensors Cyberlink... Read more...
In-Stat research forecasts that the number of Blu-ray player units shipped will reach 105 million in 2015. BD players shipped to North America in 2010 represented 38% of the total Blu-ray player and recorder... Read more...
Interpret, a leading entertainment, media and technology market research firm, released its Q1 2011 3D Entertainment report, which finds that Nintendo has yet to capitalize on the earlier anticipation... Read more...
While theater owners across France gather at the 66th annual FNCF (National Federation of French Cinemas conference, held 19-22 September in Lyon), 3D solutions company Volfoni announces their latest ... Read more...
Findings from research firm Frank N Magid Associates carried out on behalf of Panasonic during Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim last month, suggest that a vast majority of US consumers believe that 3DTV... Read more...
Coral Products – Britain’s only maker of CD cases and one of only two in Europe that produces red tag security DVD boxes – plans to acquire Interpak for £4.1 million in a strategic move to take... Read more...
With the exception of LG, which gave pride of place to the new immersive standard, 3D did not dominate this year's IFA – Berlin's annual consumer electronics bazaar. Given that, last year, CE manufacturers... Read more...
The British Video Association is calling for wider recognition of the level of organised crime involved in online IP theft and the damage this crime wreaks on consumers, the video entertainment and other... Read more...
While seamless device portability for high quality content has become the hallmark of successful digital media strategies, Ultraviolet – a competing digital content and device ecosystem to iTunes - ... Read more...
Vilnius has opened the first Blu-ray disc production facility in the Baltic States, which is claimed to be one of the most modern optical disc manufacturing plants in Europe. The production centre is ... Read more...
Sunlyte, who launched the Sunlyte Certified Carbon Free manufacturing service in January of this year, is partnering with Langenhagen, Germany-based EDC and shorewood.blueprint, based in Middlesex, UK... Read more...
Optical disc maker CMC Magnetics expects its third-quarter revenues to grow 10% sequentially and is also expected to turn a profit, as second-tier disc makers are gradually phasing out of the optical ... Read more...
The Economist (20 August) looks at the consequences of file-sharing for local media industries and global cultural trade. The piece concludes that while downloading music and films illegally ... Read more...
With Berlin’s IFA extravaganza dominated by Connected TVs, it was timely for Rovi to unveil at its DivX Plus Streaming, a secure adaptive streaming solution for the delivery of feature-rich, entertainment... 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.
