Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Developed by London-based leading-edge post-production facility The Pavement, the first DVD & Blu-ray Bit Budget iPhone App went live on the Apps Store last week... Read more...
Users illegally downloading music and films could have their internet connection cut off under legislation unveiled in the Queen's Speech yesterday in the British Parliament... Read more...
Screen Digest’s Video Intelligence team has just released its annual review of the global market for physical video. The report indicates that Blu-ray Disc (BD) sales will not be sufficient this year... Read more...
Reporting on its third quarter financial results of 2009, replicator Cinram recorded a 15% decrease in overall revenue to $351.2 million from $411.7 million in the corresponding period of 2008. Excluding... Read more...
The British Video Association, on behalf of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures (UK) Ltd., Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment UK and Warner... Read more...
The new LA-based encoding and project management facility, which sits within the security perimeter of GDMX, the studio-owned C&A house, will be the link Oxford, UK-located IDM needs to improve its client... Read more...
The current CEO of AudioDev, Marianne Sernevi, has decided to leave the company, and effective from the 1 December 2009, Peter Falk takes over the reins of the Swedish optical disc testing equipment maker... Read more...
Austria, Elbigenalp-based kdg mediatech AG opened a sales office for the Nordic Countries in Denmark on 1 November. Jens-Uwe Eras has been appointed head of strategic solutions... Read more...
Bradford-based disc production company is expanding its eco-friendly portiofolio of bespoke media packaging solutions with the addition a ‘green’ DVD case. The DVD WowWallet joins an array of sustainable... Read more...
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, film producer Troy J.S. Goffin surprises American audiences with the DVD of his film on the car that symbolizes the escape from East Germany. With upcoming... Read more...
In a compromise deal announced by EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding (pictured), the European parliament has agreed new rules that balance a crackdown on illegal downloaders with broader rights for... Read more...
Technological advances, ecological awakening, retailers’ green policy and government regulations coalesce to making carbon footprint-busting discs an ever more attractive proposition. WILHELM F MITTRICH... Read more...
A BD-Live solution developed by German interactive studio Imagion AG is now available in North America under the ‘BD-Connect’ brand name through a partnership with leading authoring and production... Read more...
In a preemptive strike against its rival the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, the Walt Disney company is expected to launch this month a ‘cloud’-based technology called Keychest designed to... Read more...
While the market for High-Definition TV (HDTV) has hit the mainstream, the industry has already started speculating about the commercialisation of Ultra-High Definition (UHD), according to market research... Read more...
The French video and digital publishers’ association, SEVN, is lobbying to ensure that funds from a big national loan be earmarked to digitise 5,000 French feature films over five years... 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.
... Read More...
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.
