Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Blu-ray disc unit sales rocketed 167% last year, helping to steady the falling DVD market in Europe, according to the Digital Entertainment Group Europe (DEGE) quoted by the UK Press Association... Read more...
According to Dutch entertainment industry body NVPI, last year domestic consumers spent a total of €884.1 million on music, video and games, down 7.1% on 2008's results. It is the first time the total... Read more...
Sony is pushing the 3D home entertainment envelope with the announcement of a new 3D Blu-ray Disc player as well as firmware upgrades for a range of 3D-capable BD players already on the market. Upgrades... Read more...
Bob Mayson, Managing Director of RealD Europe and Chris Reiser, Executive Vice President of Sony DADC are the latest keynote speakers announced for this year’s PEVE Digital Entertainment conference (... Read more...
Authoring solution provider sofatronic is expanding its Kaleidoscope software for use with interactive TV. The technology is based on the company’s Blu-ray software, which is already being used by leading... Read more...
Burbank, California-based BluFocus, an advanced testing and certification facility specializing in the QA of media products and solutions, is launching their 3D-Focus Laboratory which will provide services... Read more...
Czech optical digital media service company Brickbox Digital Media has acquired leading Hungarian authoring service provider Media Vision Kft... Read more...
Following on the announcement of a range of Full HD 3D TV products, including a prosumer Full HD 3D camcorder, at CES Las Vegas, Panasonic is now unveiling its fully operational Blu-ray 3D Advanced Authoring... Read more...
Singapore-based technology company Sunny Ocean Studios is currently developing the world’s first 3D cinema in which the audience will no longer require any special glasses. At CeBIT the company is presenting... Read more...
Warner Home Video notified Toronto-based replicator Cinram it will terminate a six-year service agreement with the company in July, taking its business to Paris-based Technicolor. With the news, shares... Read more...
Shorewood.blueprint, the global packaging and production company, has announced a number of structural changes in response to the group’s rapid expansion during 2009 and aggressive growth plans for ... Read more...
Jim Wuthrich, President, International, Home Video and Digital for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, will deliver the Digital Keynote at this year’s PEVE Digital Entertainment 2010, the annual conference... Read more...
The National Film Board of Canada is introducing high-definition films online and adding a bonus feature of recent experiments in online 3-D. A year ago the NFB gave Canadians free access to 70 years ... Read more...
Screen Digest's media analysts have prepared their predictions for the coming year and beyond. As we leave 2009 behind - one of the hardest for the media sector in recent years, what can we expect from... Read more...
Sony Pictures has commissioned British comedian, author and columnist Danny Wallace to front its latest online Blu-ray Disc promotion in the UK. The video, embedded below, continues the themes of the ... Read more...
Leading Hong Kong-based full-service video production house Best & Original Production Limited has authored the first BD-J title in Asia, 'The City of Life and Death,' using sofatronic's Kaleidoscope ... 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.
