Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
There has been so much in the news about the current economic downturn and the effects on all markets and industries that the general feeling is to take cover and head for the hills. But TRACY SHELDON... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association is deploying several initiatives throughout Europe to bring awareness of the hires disc format to the next stage. Some industry tenors had lamented that not enough had been... Read more...
From VHS, CD, DVD and Blu-ray authoring, replication and duplication to encoding for digital cinema, VOD, Internet and mobile, not forgetting archiving, SYMON ROUE, Chairman of re:fine, explains why the... Read more...
Worldwide, some 41% of all software installed on personal computers is obtained illegally, with foregone revenues to the software industry totaling $53 billion, according to the Business Software Alliance... Read more...
In the first ever survey of the on-demand audiovisual services in Europe, the European Audiovisual Observatory has identified 696 services from 366 different providers that were operational at the end... Read more...
Research released today by the British Video Association (BVA) has suggested that the average British living room is stuck in 1992, often featuring an array of outdated technology including VHS recorders... Read more...
While US consumer spending for the third quarter of 2009 in the home entertainment window for pre-recorded entertainment – DVD, Blu-ray and digital distribution – was off slightly at $4 billion, down... Read more...
itfc, the leading London-based video services provider, has expanded its DVD offering with the launch of its new Blu-ray authoring service. In preparation, itfc upgraded its DVD QC department with a series... Read more...
Given that 80% of pirated DVD material is sourced from camcording a movie in a cinema, according to the MPAA, measures are being taken to stop these activities. The latest to date comes from Germany where... Read more...
Burbank, California-based BluFocus Inc, the entertainment industry's first advanced testing and advisory service specialist for Blu-ray, has established the first, and currently only Testing Center in... Read more...
Has anything happened in the past three years that might bring holographic discs closer to reality? MEGUMI KOMIYA, Head of Research at Globalcom, takes stock of the latest developments, pinpointing promising... Read more...
US consumer spending on rentals of DVDs and Blu-ray discs jumped 9.9% in the third quarter 2009 over the same period last year, bringing in $1.6 billion, according to Rentrak. The numbers are fueled by... Read more...
TDK presented a prototype 10-layer, 320GB disc at the CEATEC Japan 2009 convention. The new optical disc holds six times the capacity of Blu-ray’s BD50 (50GB) media. Each layer accommodates 32GB compared... Read more...
Ireland's black market trade in DVDs has morphed into a multi-million euro organised crime operation with half of all new films sold now coming from pirates, said the director general of the Irish National... Read more...
According to a recent In-Stat survey, consumers are interested in receiving 3D in the home. Those who have seen three or more 3D movies in the theater are more interested than the general respondents ... Read more...
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will start including into the Blu-ray disc of a new release a digital copy which can be played on the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The digital file can be transferred from... 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.
