Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Czech authoring house Brickbox Digital Media has restored Dario Argento’s acclaimed 1977 classic horror film Suspiria on Blu-ray and DVD. Released on 18 January, Suspiria is Nouveaux Pictures’ first... Read more...
Internet video device shipments will experience global growth of 78% year-over-year from 2009 to 2010. The device categories that will see the most significant uptake in the short term are connected TVs... Read more...
French sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs were up in 2009, reversing a downward trend over the previous four years, according to initial data from market research firm GfK. In value term, packaged media recorded... Read more...
John McMahon, Managing Director Europe, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, is the first confirmed keynote speaker of PEVE Digital Entertainment 2010, the annual conference organised by analysts Screen ... Read more...
Dutch-based Nexpak Europe, the manufacturer and supplier of DVD and Blu-ray packaging, has formally filed for bankruptcy. The company's operations are being dismantled and assets are being consolidated... Read more...
Television viewers could soon be enjoying their favourite programmes or feature films in 'stereoscopic 3D', thanks to ground-breaking work being undertaken at the UN agency, the International Telecommunication... Read more...
Video on Demand (VoD) delivered straight to the television is generating high levels of consumer interest, but little revenue, with free content accounting for more than 95% of the material being watched... Read more...
Entertainment Distribution Company GmbH (EDC), the largest, fully integrated optical disc manufacturing and distribution site in Europe with head office in New York, has a new Managing Director & CEO, ... Read more...
Company One For All has launched SmartControl – the first universal remote to work with all the latest digital equipment such as HDTV, DVB-T, iPod docks, Blu-ray, Playstation2, Xbox 360, Full HD LCD... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association has unveiled the new logo for the Blu-ray 3D standard, which was ratified in December. The specification allows for 1080p resolution delivery to each eye while wearing stereoscopic... Read more...
A 18-year old Swiss serial internet downloader has been fined Frs3,000 (€2,000) and two-year probation for having shared with others some 270 films and 4,200 songs she illegally downloaded. As the guilty... Read more...
Recently entering Blu-ray Disc manufacturing, the leading Polish replicator TAKT has started a partnership with German replicator Infodisc Technology that will offer its clients a complete service with... Read more...
New figures on the home entertainment market just released by the British Video Association reveal that video home entertainment has weathered the recessionary storm in 2009, with December unit sales ... Read more...
A new method of evaluating Blu-ray Disc media quality could increase the per-layer storage capacity of a BD discs from 25GB to 33.4GB. The new method is likely to accelerate development of discs offering... Read more...
The home entertainment market was down 5% in 2009, though still reaching $22.8 billion in US consumer spending on all pre-recorded content. Blu-ray Disc products were the bright spot of the industry with... Read more...
Rovi has strengthened its next-generation media guide solution for the European market with the inclusion of Internet-based content from 15 individual content providers across Germany, France and the ... 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.
