Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The ink on the active shutter glasses 3D TV specifications is barely dry that glasses-free 3D autostereoscopic systems are already showing up as prototype consumer products on the floor of the Consumer... Read more...
Sony is strengthening its 3D consumer product portfolio with the unveiling at CES of a 3D camcorder. The HDR-TD10E is the world's first ‘Double Full HD’ 3D consumer Handycam camcorder – the camcorder... Read more...
Bristol, UK-based IT development company Ocean Blue Software is showcasing at CES 2011, jointly with STMicroelectronics, its Talking TV technology, “the world's first assistive technology for digital... Read more...
MARC DORCEL, a European leader in the adult entertainment market, is to launch the Continent’s first 3D video download service without digital rights management (DRM), following on the launch in November... Read more...
The 2010 home entertainment market continued to be bolstered by the steady growth of Blu-ray as total US home entertainment spending hit $18.8 billion to close the year, according to the latest figures... Read more...
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a cross-industry consortium dedicated to creating a consumer-friendly open market for digital content distribution, announced at the Consumer Electronics... Read more...
New figures for the UK video entertainment market, released today by the British Video Association (BVA), show that video maintained its position during 2010. Some £2.6 billion (excluding subscription... Read more...
Irish film industry research suggests that 100,000 movies are illegally downloaded every week in the country, the Irish Independent reports. With people having spent more time at home over the... Read more...
New figures from the German division of GfK have shown that Blu-ray has had another successful year in the region. According to Gfk, every tenth disc sold in Germany in the first half of 2010 was a Blu... Read more...
Before Christmas, the Spanish House of Representatives has rejected new legislation under which hundreds of file-sharing sites that are currently operating legally, could have been shut down. The rejection... Read more...
The strategy of ‘mining’ studios’ back catalogues exhausted the category. The years of burning through ever older catalogue titles to generate easy revenues in a booming market are over. Instead... Read more...
Rovi Corporation is to acquire Sonic Solutions in a stock and cash transaction worth about $720 million. The acquisition is structured as an exchange offer for all of the outstanding shares of Sonic common... Read more...
Kaleidescape, Inc., creator of the movie server product category, today announced shipment of the industry's first Blu-ray movie server. The Kaleidescape System stores exact copies of the Blu-ray Discs... Read more...
Many illegal file sharers believe they are the ‘Robin Hoods of the digital age’ and are motivated by altruism and a desire for notoriety, according to new research which analyses why people illegally... Read more...
Worldwide pre-recorded Blu-ray video disc production is on track to exceed 400 million units in 2010, an increase of nearly 60% compared with 2009, according to a new research report from Futuresource... Read more...
According to research firm IHS Screen Digest, more titles on 3D Blu-ray are now offered at retail rather than bundled with TV sets or players, so the key issue will be shelf space. RICHARD BAXTER reports... 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.
