Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies

News in Brief

A US woman has spent the night behind bars for failing to return a DVD she rented out in 2005. Kayla Michelle Finley, 27, rented the movie Monster-In-Law nine years ago but never got around to returning it. Several warnings and requests to return the DVD were sent to Ms Finlay - all of which she ignored. Eventually, police in Pickens Country in South Carolina sent her a letter asking her to bring back the film, but after she ignored that warning a warrant was issued for her arrest. She spent the night behind bars.

TORONTO-based Cinram, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of Blu-ray discs, DVDs and CDs for media studios, has purchased the Interra Systems Baton automated content verification and quality control software for use at the Cinram manufacturing and packaging facility in Olyphant and the Cinram 1K Studio in Burbank. Baton helps pinpointing quality issues during the DVD/Blu-ray production and authoring process.

JAPAN's public broadcaster NHK has a small technical team at the Sochi Winter Olympics testing and recording events in 8K, Super Hi-Vision. The engineers have built a special theatre in the main Olympic complex at Sochi and equipped it with a Panasonic 145in display, plus 22.2-channel surround sound. Viewers can see recordings made at the opening ceremony and figure skating competitions. NHK's technical facilities include a pair of Ikegami 8K cameras with FUJINON 5x zoom lenses and Canon 10x lenses. NHK has also covered the events with a 4K camera ultra-high frame rate unit shooting at 300 frames per second in order to provide super-slo-mo replays.

IMAGE Entertainment is well known for its horror fare in the US, and this month RLJ Entertainment is launching a UK arm of the thriving label with the first release being sci-fi action thriller Scavengers on DVD and Blu-ray.

Motorola Mobility became licensed for its MPEG-2 products under the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License offered by MPEG LA. As a result, companies that license their essential MPEG-2 patents through MPEG LA agreed to dismiss patent infringement actions brought against Motorola in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida