Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Leading quality assurance and testing services provider Testronic Laboratories has appointed Seth Hallen to the post of CEO. He takes over from Neil Goodall who is stepping down from the business... Read more...
Environmentally-friendly disc solution provider EcoDisc has revealed the results of its social media poll that point to the public’s continued infatuation CDs and DVDs, despite the growing popularity... Read more...
French CD/DVD packaging design and manufacturing company Key Solutions has won a court case again Portuguese company VDS PAK for counterfeiting of products by third party Mango with which Key Solutions... Read more...
More than a third of the 1,500 registered Internet cafes in Beijing have been or will soon be indicted on suspicion of piracy, according to local media reports. The move, initiated by the government, ... Read more...
A U.S. class action charges Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi, LG Technology and Philips, manufacturers of optical disc drives used in CD, DVD and Blu-ray players of price-fixing... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association has released the specifications for BDXL, the new multi-layer recordable Blu-ray Disc format with up to 128GB of capacity. With the completion and approval of the specification... Read more...
Sony DADC opened a new packaging, refurbishment and service centre in Pilsen, Czech Republic. The central European facility further extends Sony DADC’s European supply chain infrastructure, serving ... Read more...
Roxio, a division of Sonic Solutions, announced that CinePlayer, its media player for Windows, has received Blu-ray Profile 5 (3D) certification from the Blu-ray Disc Association. Blu-ray 3D support enhances... Read more...
Following a year of decline in 2009, the global entertainment and media market, as a whole, will grow by 5% compounded annually for the entire forecast period to 2014 reaching $1.7 trillion, up from $... Read more...
A selection of data on various sectors of the European market from leading research companies... Read more...
The new generation of Blu-ray players gives consumers more opportunity to enjoy the BD experience by uploading and downloading content through the Internet. Audiences are increasingly familiar with this... Read more...
UK-based technology company Blinkbox has partnered with the UK Film Council and the British Film Institute to offer a week-long free streaming service to popular Hollywood films in an effort to lure internet... Read more...
Sonic Solutions announced a strategic partnership with MOD Systems that intends to arm retailers with a complete, multi-platform system for digitally delivering premium entertainment. DVD kiosks have ... Read more...
Cisco announced the results of its annual Visual Networking Index Forecast, 2009-2014, which projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes (EB) – or 767 million... Read more...
Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) recently showed a 42-inch glasses-free 3D LCD TV, and the company can currently make them with screens as large as 65 inches, according to Stephen... Read more...
The European Commission unveiled its ambitious Digital Agenda for Europe action plan aimed at “spreading the benefits of the digital era to all sections of society... 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.
