Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is to make certain niche and deep catalogue titles in its library available on DVD through a Hewlett-Packard service that manufactures the discs on demand... Read more...
Maxell has unveiled a range of 'leather-coated' recordable DVD media. The discs come in two versions: 16x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW... Read more...
Toshiba Corporation has filed a lawsuit at the District Court of Milan's Specialised IP Chamber against Italian DVD replicator ACME SpA to halt infringement of Toshiba's DVD patent. The Japanese manufacturer... Read more...
The Hollywood studios have filed a lawsuit asking a US federal court to stop RealNetworks from distributing the company’s just-released RealDVD software which allows movies to be copied illegally... Read more...
Following the negative press coverage the HD DVD format received at the CES in the wake of Warner's Blu-ray defection, Toshiba says it will debut a new marketing campaign in an effort to attract cash-... Read more...
Effective today, the world's largest CE manufacturer Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. has become Panasonic Corporation. Its ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange has been changed to PC ... Read more...
Figures released by the British Video Association show that DVD was worth more than £2.3 billion in 2007 including £22 million from hi-def formats – representing a return to year on year value growth... Read more...
Disney's release of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on 2 December will be pushing the extras and interactivity technology with an exclusive new feature called CircleVision... Read more...
Just one month after setting up its own representation in Germany, packaging manufacturer BDMO keeps expanding its reach by hiring Simon Valley to establish sales and marketing operations in the United... Read more...
Following an order earlier this year for three Singulus Indigo Blu-ray BD50 lines, in addition to the one it already operates, Russia, Moscow-based Laser-Video Multimedia claims to have become Europe’... Read more...
At the eve of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Warner announced that it will go Blu-ray exclusively for all its new high-definition titles released after May 2008, thus ending its dual-format... Read more...
IPTV services have been seen as a way to reduce churn in broadband markets and boost additional revenue by making the overall product more attractive to customers. However, the latest research by Screen... Read more...
The Blu-ray Disc Association European Promotions Committee announced that total BD disc movie sales across Europe have reached over two million units. The news comes within two months of the announcement... Read more...
That the future of music resides in downloads is not news to video content owners, but it is only in the last year or so that they have begun to accept that online delivery is also a serious threat to... Read more...
CDA Datentrager Albrechts has started production of the first 3X-format DVDs at its Thuringia-based operation. Managing Director Dr Nicolaus Hettler said: "The 3X DVD is a lower-cost alternative for our... Read more...
Ascent Media announced it has signed an agreement to sell its subtitling business, Visiontext, to SDI Media, the world's leading subtitling and language dubbing provider, by the end of this month. This... 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.
