Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Unchecked internet downloading and street vendors' pirate trade are taking their toll on legitimate home entertainment business and the domestic production industry. Unable to compete with counterfeit... Read more...
Sony said it will close its Blu-ray player factory in Hungary and move production to its plant in Malaysia to help improve profitability. The plant in Godollo, Hungary, established in 1996, will shut ... Read more...
Testronic Laboratories, the leader in quality assurance and testing services for home entertainment, gaming, websites, hardware and software, has announced the opening of their new Digital Entertainment... Read more...
A combination of a slower-than-expected fall in retail prices and the impact of the worst economic recession in living memory ensured that – unlike in the US – sales of Blu-ray hardware failed to ... Read more...
The first Blu-ray Disc Academy's one-day forum brought together at Frankfurt, Germany, some 140 professionals from 23 countries, representing all facets of the packaged media industry. They were treated... Read more...
Japanese venture technology company Visionare has developed an application, Pay-Per-View Blu-ray that makes it possible for consumers to rent or purchase the content of a BD disc using a mobile phone ... Read more...
London-based content processing and re-purposing specialist, re:fine, has become the first UK facility capable of creating 3D Blu-ray thanks to a recent investment in 3DAccess software from Sonic Solutions... Read more...
Sony DADC has authored and manufactured the Blu-ray 3D release of OceanWorld 3D for independent distributor Eagle Pictures. The underwater adventure movie was the first ocean documentary to be... Read more...
In time for the launch of iPad in Germany, replicator and multimedia service provider Infodisc has extended the capability of its Copy-to-Go technology to offers HD content on the Apple tablet via Copy... Read more...
According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, the global home video market is poised to see further declines in the years ahead. Global revenue from sales of DVDs and Blu-Ray declined more... Read more...
German BD authoring pioneer Imagion, working with Big Picture Productions, unveiled the first European 3D Blu-ray disc of the film Grand Canyon Adventure created by Academy Award-nominated producers... Read more...
Following robust sales in 2009, strong Blu-ray Disc sales continued during the first quarter of 2010 in Europe, topping €151.4 million. Combined with DVD sales, the home entertainment market saw an ... Read more...
Germany’s Infodisc Technology, Europe’s first independent replicator to invest in the Blu-ray format in 2007, has expanded the portfolio of its design and authoring arm, Infomedia, unveiling 3D BD... Read more...
EcoDisc has launched its environmentally-friendly DVDs in the UK. Available in DVD5 format with DVD9 and CD formats also in development, the EcoDisc uses 50% less polycarbonate. It also removes the need... Read more...
AEPO-ARTIS representing collective management organisations for performers in Europe welcomes the European Commission’s work and reflections on issues related to Europe’s digital economy and in particular... Read more...
NEC announced the development of a video content identification technology that detects illegal copies of video content uploaded to the Internet in a matter of seconds. This technology generates a fingerprint... 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.
