Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Research carried out by GfK revealed that Blu-ray sales continue to rise in Germany and across Europe. German consumers bought 7 million Blu-ray discs in the first half of 2011 – an increase of 2 million... Read more...
Scandinavia’s largest film rental facility for stores, Videotoppen, is merging with the online film service provider film2home.se, enabling those retailers to offer their customers films streamed online... Read more...
The BBC will put a toe in 3D and super high-definition waters at the 2012 Olympics. Roger Mosey, the BBC executive in charge of the corporation’s London 2012 coverage, told reporters at the Edinburgh... Read more...
3D subtitling calls for tectonic changes in all aspects of production and post-production of stereographic films and TV programmes. It requires new plots, new shooting approaches, new conventions and ... Read more...
Following the agreement signed between International Paper and Atlas Holdings Shorewood Packaging and AGI World, two leading global suppliers of packaging solutions, are merging to become AGI-Shorewood... Read more...
Following the fire at Sony DADC’s distribution centre in Enfield, North London, during the riots which resulted in the loss of the building, the company announced collaboration agreements with Cinram... Read more...
Though the implementation of 3D on mobile devices is still in its infancy and requires considerably more advanced technical solution for both viewing and capturing 3D, research firm In-stat forecasts ... Read more...
US consumer spending on DVD and Blu-ray Discs account for 42% of all video spending in 2010. This compares with 25% spent at the box office, 27% on pay/premium TV and 5% on VOD and Electronic sell-through... Read more...
Global box-office revenue from 3D movie screens soared to $6.1 billion in 2010, more than double the $2.5 billion generated in 2009. Of the global 3D total last year, international territories accounted... Read more...
Watching television shows in 3D has become a regular activity for the majority of 3DTV owners, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics’ Connected Home Devices service. Two-thirds of... Read more...
Following the total arson destruction of its 24,000-square meter CD/DVD/BD distribution centre in Enfield, North London – in the wake of London’s riots – Sony DADC has announced it is working very... Read more...
Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and X6D Limited (XPAND 3D) are to collaborate on the development of a new technology standard for consumer 3D active glasses, under the name, "Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative... Read more...
Blu-ray Disc spending is up more than 10% and overall consumer spending on home entertainment is down 5%, despite a 16% drop in box-office for titles that entered the home entertainment window in the ... Read more...
Sony has warned that UK and Ireland deliveries of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs could be affected after its massive three-storey, 20,000 square-metre fulfillment and distribution warehouse in Enfield, north... Read more...
Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner’s chairman and chief executive, confirmed to analysts during a conference call that the company is to debut use of the cloud-based multi-device UltraViolet digital distribution... Read more...
Announced back in February 2009, formally established eight months later, One-Blue has officially launched its licensing programme for Blu-ray Disc products. Participating companies include Cyberlink, ... 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.
