Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
On the back of encouraging market developments and increasing audience interest, consumer spending on Bluray 3D Disc in 2011 is forecast to rise 533% across the four big markets of the United States... Read more...
Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn and Beijing-based colleague Dan Levin offer a sobering, while entertaining overview of the massive transacting of illegal DVDs in China – a business worth... Read more...
The British Video Association is launching a new Facebook hub dedicated to the home viewing Blu-ray experience on behalf of the home entertainment division of 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures... Read more...
Most Americans, Britons and Canadians are unlikely to purchase a 3D television any time soon, according to a recent Vision Critical poll. The online survey of representative national samples shows that... Read more...
The various technologies underpinning glasses-free 3D autostereoscopic viewing will be a key feature of the forthcoming Blu-ray Disc Academy 3D conference held in Hamburg on 3-4 May, co-organised by DVD... Read more...
In a world first, Sky 3D will broadcast the only known existing 3D film and photographs of Nazi soldiers, Allied troops and civilians using recently discovered footage recorded during the Second World... Read more...
Taiwan’s two major optical disc manufacturers, CMC Magnetic and Ritek, have decided to boost output in response to the rapidly growing demand for recordable Blu-ray discs... Read more...
As part of its commitment to expanding its role as the International Content Protection Association, CDSA has announced new senior-level appointments to its Board of Directors... Read more...
3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, the world's first major 3D pornograhic movie, is generating a lot of excitement in China, where it opens in Hong Kong and Taiwan this week, and there are already... Read more...
Physical media will remain the dominant home media format through at least 2015, and is unlikely to be overtaken by digital distribution until 2021, concludes a study collating data from The Digital Entertainment... Read more...
"Mindlab scientists prove Blu-ray 3D is the most engaging format," claims the Blu-ray Disc Association website, reporting on a neurological research the BDA commissioned Mindlab International to carry... Read more...
Amongst a range of topics, the forthcoming Blu-ray Disc Academy 3D conference in Hamburg – organised by DVD Intelligence – will feature developments in glasses-free 3D television with the participation... Read more...
Nintendo has launched its new handheld game consoler, 3DS. It offers users 3D glasses-free autosteoscopic viewing to generally positive review, as nobody knew what immersive effect to expect on such a... Read more...
French independent optical disc solutions provider MPO has acquired the French subsidiary of Belgium packaging manufacturer BDMO with the stated objective of strengthening its own packaging division M... Read more...
Ownership of 3DTVs will accelerate rapidly over the next three years, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, which predicts that 34% of US homes will own a 3D-ready TV by 2014. In Europe... Read more...
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem's much-touted UltraViolet service, that allows consumers to purchase digital content and watch it wherever, whenever, across multiple platforms, is to launch... 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.
