Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The passive 3D TV technology may have the edge on the competing active shutter glasses 3D option if one goes by a consumer study funded by LG – that happens to push the passive approach – but NPD ... Read more...
A total ban on the sale of pirated discs in the entire city of Manila was pushed through last week by Mayor Alfredo S. Lim during a meeting with Optical Media Board Chairman Ronnie Ricketts... Read more...
Following its acquisition by Kit Digital, a global supplier of IP platforms and solutions, in September 2010, and after several months of finalizing its integration, digital content company Brickbox Digital... Read more...
With Thailand remaining on the United States' Priority Watch List (PWL) for another year, local film distributors and home entertainment companies are questioning the government's ability to enforce the... Read more...
Thanks to high-level demands, profit margins for optical disc makers have increased, while CD-R disc prices are expected to rise by 20% in the second half of the year, according to CMC Magnetics chairman... Read more...
Following a joint operation with the Motion Picture Association Asia Pacific, which was designed to identify merchants specialising in the sale of illegal counterfeit DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, PayPal permanently... Read more...
Gang members who ran the UK's biggest counterfeit DVD factory have been sentenced this week to a total of seven years and 10 months before Southwark Crown Court, after being found guilty of infringing... Read more...
The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) endorsed legislation pending in the US Senate to ensure that copyright infringement by streaming over the Internet can be punished as a felony in certain ... Read more...
Based on information from NPD's latest update to the Entertainment Trends in America report, 15% of US consumers reported using a Blu-ray player in the prior six months in March 2011, up from... Read more...
Worldwide box-office receipts dropped 16% in the first quarter of 2011 due to a post-Avatar effect in which movie houses were unable to compete at the same level as last year, according... Read more...
BluFocus Inc, an advanced testing and certification facility specializing in media content, products and applications for the home entertainment industry, has opened an office in the UK to service the... Read more...
Infomedia, part of German independent replicator and digital service provider Infodisc Group, has struck a partnership deal with US company Inception Digital Services to delivers video content via its... Read more...
Testronic Labs, the leader in quality assurance services for all type of media hardware and software – including to date over 5,500 BD discs and 80 3D BDs, has announced the opening of its new File-... Read more...
Entertainment Distribution Company GmbH, the largest, fully integrated optical disc manufacturing and distribution site in Europe with head office in New York, continues to invest in growing its European... Read more...
In what could well be Europe’s largest piracy-related bust, Dresden Chief Prosecutor’s Office carried out a coordinated large-scale operation against the biggest German-language portal for pirated... Read more...
The UK’s video entertainment now accounts for nearly half the revenues of feature films and more than a third of TV series and dramas, as the British production community increasingly relies on the ... 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.
