Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
“3D adds complexity that goes well beyond what we have seen before,” says ADAM LESH, US Chief Technology Officer of Testronic Labs. He reviews the various technical challenges to overcome in order... Read more...
Camcording films in cinema theaters is the primary source of counterfeit DVDs and film titles made available illegally on the Internet. Help from filmgoers and cinema staff is increasingly called upon... Read more...
Duplico 2000, a major CD and DVD manufacturer in Spain, is entering the Blu-ray market with an announcement of the acquisition of a BLULINE II Single Layer and Dual Layer replication system from Singulus... Read more...
3DTV is now readily available in retail, but the uptake among consumers has been limited by high prices and lack of content. However, with falling prices, increased content availability, and improvements... Read more...
Compatibility problems found between some active 3D shutter glasses and 3D displays of different brands are being addressed by various eyewear makers. XPAND’s Universal 3D Glasses, designed to work ... Read more...
The growing popularity of connected devices – especially Apple’s iPad – is starting to change the way people consume media. Almost two-thirds of iPad owners have already downloaded a paid app. The... Read more...
TDK developed an optical disc with a capacity of 1 Terabyte. Demonstrated at the CEATEC trade show in Japan, the unnamed format holds 1024GB, roughly the same as 218 DVD-R discs - opening up new possibilities... Read more...
Consumer interest in connected CE devices - particularly connected TVs and Blu-ray players – has been slow to develop, predominantly due to a lack of industry and retail push, and a glut of competing... Read more...
Multimedia and TV production company DutchView together with 3DNL, a platform for the promotion of 3D in the Netherlands, opened 3D LiveLab, a meeting place where manufacturers, producers, broadcasters... Read more...
The number of Internet users worldwide doubled in the past five years and will surpass the two billion mark in 2010, according to The International Telecommunication Union’s latest statistics published... Read more...
Japan’s Taiyo Uyden, the leading manufacturer of recordable media, announced that it would be downsizing its optical disc production capacity by roughly 40%, as it seeks to restore profitability to ... Read more...
The adoption rate of the iPad comfortably surpassed the previous record holder, the DVD player, says Bernstein Research in a note to investors. It found that the Apple tablet is selling at a rate of 4... Read more...
Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was released by Paramount in 2006 in a package that sets the sustainability bar by being made of 100% post-consumer waste recycled... Read more...
Sales of Blu-ray players in the USA, Japan, and Western Europe are expected to top nearly 24 million units in 2010, including sales of 11 million players in the fourth quarter, according to a new report... Read more...
German copy protection solutions developer X-PROTECT GmbH has gone into receivership earlier this month. CEO Oliver Koch says the company suffered massive losses in the current financial year which forced... Read more...
London-based creative houses Petrol Digital Media, Dare Post and 1410 Degrees are joining forces to create a new company, Silversun Media Group, that will bring “fresh talent, creativity and energy ... 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.
