Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The organisers of the forthcoming PEVE 2011 conference in London (10-11 March) hopes several topics on the programme will stir up heated discussions. According to IHS Screen Digest research, physical ... Read more...
The German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) revealed in a survey of 43 high-traffic German file-hosting websites that more than half were linking visitors to unauthorized copies of games – eight... Read more...
The 3D TV market worldwide is expected to surpass the landmark figure of $100bn by 2014. Worldwide 3D TV unit sales are forecast to grow with a CAGR of 79.12% for the period spanning 2010 – 2014, according... Read more...
Cinram International has acquired Los Angeles-based digital media company 1K Studios. The move is part of a broad initiative to advance Toronto-based disc replicator and distribution Cinram, a provider... Read more...
Medialog, the logistics arm of Austria-based independent replicator kdg mediatech, now provides e-commerce logistics for packaged entertainment products Media Markt in Austria. The giant German consumer... Read more...
Mediaset, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster, has trialed the first 3D broadcast service over a digital terrestrial television (DTT) network. The service, known as 3VOD, operates on the Bestv settop... Read more...
David Willetts, the UK’s Minister for Universities and Science, has announced £7.2 million of investment in a project dubbed Photonics HyperHighway to "make the internet 100 times faster... Read more...
After starting to send warning emails on 5 October to Internet users suspected of illegal file-sharing, the French authorities have announced that they are now sending out a second wave of emails accompanied... Read more...
With competition intensifying among pay-TV operators and newer content platforms, IHS Screen Digest Senior Analyst RICHARD BROUGHTON asks if this is truly the year when Video-On-Demand takes off... Read more...
One-Blue LLC, an independent licensing company, announced it will launch a one-stop shop product license for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc products on 1 April 2011, subject to necessary governmental... Read more...
Consumer spending on packaged media in France has weathered the harsh economic climate in 2010. Spending was up 0.1% to €1.38 billion, with 94.8 million DVD and Blu-ray discs sold (+1%), according to... Read more...
The television industry is back on a growth path, with a global market of €289.2 billion, which marks a 7.1% increase compared to 2009, according to IDATE’s World TV Markets report... Read more...
China will step up its fight to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) by targeting online piracy, state media has said, amid calls for Beijing to do more on widespread copyright infringement... Read more...
In the 2011 edition of its wide-ranging consumer research, Finding Growth: Emergence of a New Consumer Technology Paradigm, the global management and technology consultancy Accenture predicts... Read more...
A leader in green packaging solutions, Maine, USA-based Sunlyte Packaging is launching the Sunlyte Certified Carbon-Free manufacturing service for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. Through material and energy... Read more...
Despite years of big growth and even bigger hype, the network-delivered rental and sale of videos continued to represent only a small portion of the US home video entertainment market in 2010, as consumers... 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.
