Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Sheffield, UK-based ZOO Digital, provider of software services for the filmed entertainment market, announces that its products for automated creation of DVD titles have been licensed to CBS Home Entertainment... Read more...
Increased availability of 3D content is vitally important to sales of 3D-enabled TVs in 2010 and beyond, according to new consumer research from the Consumer Electronics Association and the Entertainment... Read more...
3D Eye Solutions, a service provider and integrator for the 3D stereo and auto-stereo media industry, has begun beta testing for its glasses-free 3D application for video game platforms such as Nintendo... Read more...
Technicolor is to provide an online streaming service for LOVEFiLM.com, a leading European film and TV subscription service, delivering film and TV shows instantly to subscriber’s PC’s and in the ... Read more...
CyberLink released an advanced universal media player for the PC that upgrades the playback experience via a range of TrueTheater technologies such as enabling Full HD and 3D Blu-ray playback... Read more...
TrusCont Ltd., a leader in copy protection and DRM solutions, announced it is offering its new DVD-ROM security system free of charge and without commitments until 15 June 2010. The new copy-protection... Read more...
Alongside lip gloss, cereal bars, bottles of mineral water and hair straighteners, Blu–ray players will now be included in official inflation calculations after the UK government statisticians looked... Read more...
Graham Heaton has taken over from Niels Leibbrandt as the Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s European Promotion Committee. The move comes as Leibbrandt leaves his roles within Sony and the BDA... Read more...
RealNetworks must permanently halt the manufacture and sale of RealDVD under a 'stipulated consent judgment and permanent injunction' approved by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District... Read more...
Botswana artists believe piracy on locally-produced DVDs will soon be a thing of the past following the importation of sophisticated computer hardware from the US by one of nation's reputable record labels... Read more...
China's Internet piracy could slow efforts by web engines Sohu, Baidu, and others seeking online video ad revenue. “Rising theft of movies and TV shows in China could scare away movie and TV studios... Read more...
Germany’s Infodisc Technology, Europe’s first independent replicator to invest in the Blu-ray format in 2007, has expanded its portfolio with Infopictures GmbH, a service to support licensees to publish... Read more...
Cinram International has announced the initiation of the CDSA Content Protection and Security certification process, which for over ten years has assisted content holders and their service providers in... Read more...
Zagreb-based Lute Productions has authored Croatia’s first Blu-ray title with domestic content, Croatian Undersea 4, a project comprised of six 30-minute episodes shot in six locations in the... Read more...
Four leading companies – Mitsubishi Electric, Thomson Licensing, Toshiba and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment – have formed the BD4C Licensing Group for the joint global licensing of Blu-ray and DVD... Read more...
Research just out from Kantar Worldpanel (previously TNS) shows that the British Video Association’s Q4 2009 television advertising campaign, “What are you waiting for?” aimed at raising awareness... 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.
