Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
2 entertain, the video distribution subsidiary of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, is to launch its top-selling titles with a Digital Copy feature. This initiative will enable consumers to... Read more...
Without retreating from its original optical disc replication business, French independent manufacturer MPO is expanding its activities into the production of new-generation photovoltaic cells... Read more...
In its Q3 2010 Software Sales update, the Digital Entertainment Group Europe reveals that Blu-ray disc sales across Europe have doubled year-on-year, now accounting for €445 million spent year-to-date... Read more...
Deluxe Digital Studios has acquired the European Captioning Institute, a leading provider of subtitling, captioning, audio description and translation services for the film, television and home entertainment... Read more...
While generating sales of €31.6 million in the 3rd quarter 2010, up from €28.8 million in the same quarter one year ago, optical disc replication line manufacturer Singulus Technology produced revenues... Read more...
Amazon.com is expanding its Disc+ On Demand programme, that enables customers to instantly watch movies on Amazon Video On Demand they have purchased on DVD or Blu-ray. Some 10,000 titles are eligible... Read more...
New consumer technologies usually have a longer gestation period than is often realised. Given this long history of false starts, any cynicism surrounding the current 3D revival might be forgiven. However... Read more...
A new international coalition, led by MovieLabs, CableLabs, Comcast and Rovi Corporation launched the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), a non-profit global independent registry that provides a... Read more...
Tokyo-based Pico House has unveiled an easy-to-use 3D Blu-ray authoring solution for BD-Recordable discs. According to the developer, its prosumer “Easy3D” software conforms to the BDA’s 3D BD specifications... Read more...
The much-awaited 3D Blu-ray version of James Cameron’s highest-grossing 3D opus Avatar will be available in December – but exclusively bundled with Panasonic Full HD 3D products, until 31... Read more...
Toronto-headquartered optical disc replicator Cinram reported 2010 third quarter revenues of $254.1m compared to $348.8m from the same period last year – a sharp fall primarily attributed to the termination... Read more...
Technicolor announced that it has developed Blu-ray 3D Java interactive tools and service offerings including 3D menus and the first 3D stereoscopic game for Blu-ray 3D. The company demonstrated these... Read more...
Munich-based advanced audio specialist msm-studios has partnered with BD authoring tool supplier sofatronic to make available to publishers its Pure Audio Blu-ray technology... Read more...
Like the Industrial and Information Ages before it, the new Mobile Age is drastically altering the way consumers conduct their lives, says Deloitte. Their latest research points to which technologies ... Read more...
Nearly one in five US consumers have already experienced 3DTV firsthand, at home, at a retail store or at the home of a friend or family member, according to results of an online survey conducted by the... Read more...
Last month, the Los Angeles Times told the tribulations of Greg Carter, a renown independent filmmaker counting the cost of piracy. Already seriously impacting Hollywood blockbusters, pirate ... 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.
