Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
French packaging designer and supplier Key Solutions has hired John Bailey (pictured) to head its new office in Los Angeles (Lakewood) as US sales manager to have better access to the majors... Read more...
The French Senate overwhelmingly approved a three-strike law that would disconnect Internet users who download copyrighted entertainment without paying for it. The legislative body overwhelmingly voted... Read more...
The industry’s first equipment event with live BD50 manufacturing At this year’s Media-Tech Expo, Singulus Technologies and Anwell Precision Technologies said they will demonstrate working BD replication... Read more...
The rising popularity of digital video recorders is often said to spell doom for television viewing because the technology lets viewers skip ads. However, a new study by market research firm Knowledge... Read more...
ODS Business Services Ltd, the UK-based operation set up and financed by the ODS Group, has not escaped the turmoil initiated by the insolvency of the group's flagship plant at Dassow, Germany, earlier... Read more...
Some 8.55 million horror movies have been sold on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK between January and October 2008 compared to sales of 1.7 million on DVD and VHS 10 years ago in 1998... Read more...
Increased availability of broadband in the home, combined with consumer demand for music singles, will contribute to 40% of all music sales going digital by 2012, according to a new study... Read more...
While the DVD Forum-anointed HD DVD format is no more in the rest of the world, it is alive in China in a slightly modified version called China Blue High-Definition (CBHD). At its meeting last week in... Read more...
London-based high-end DVD production house, The Pavement, is relocating to new facilities in Soho in order to launch its range of HD services. The move will take place in early June 2008 and sees The ... Read more...
Looking at the impacts of recession on the consumer electronics industry and researching from the economic slump of 2001, Futuresource’s latest report shows digital cameras and DVD players continued... Read more...
Starting 2 April 2008, Philips introduced patent licenses for Blu-ray Disc media and hardward. The Dutch giant says it wants “to create clarity for companies that manufacture Blu-ray Disc products” ... Read more...
French packaging solution supplier Key Solutions has announced it is now starting production of its metal boxes at two site in Europe – Alicante in Spain and Istanbul in Turkey... Read more...
QOL, the French independent replicator, obtained the certification for Blu-ray double-layer discs (50GB) issued by the Blu-ray Disc Association on 16 April... Read more...
Mexican customs officials have seized 8.7 million blank optical discs imported from Taiwan in two major border operations in the past few months. The seizures were the result of investigations carried... Read more...
This year’s equipment trade show MEDIA-TECH Expo will be host to the Sony DADC Blu-ray Disc Roadshow. The replicator wants to help broaden the base of Blu-ray Disc in order to facilitate the swift establishment... Read more...
The US District Court for the Central District of California issued a permanent injunction that prohibits China-based DVD player manufacturer Gowell Electronics Ltd. from violating any term of the Content... 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.
