Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Polish border police recently carried out a raid in which they arrested eight people involved in the smuggling and manufacture of pirate CDs and DVDs... Read more...
At CEDIA expo, Sony announced its new BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray Disc player, featuring the company's newly developed HD Reality Enhancer and Super Bit Mapping technologies that deliver even sharper and more... Read more...
Danish media packaging supplier Scanavo has signed an agreement to acquire all assets from Eleko Industries (ZhuHai) Ltd, in China. Scanavo has taken over the operation of the factory from 1st January... Read more...
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In a move that caught industry analysts off guard, German optical disc replication tool maker Singulus Technology signed a contract with Swiss company Oerlikon for the acquisition of its Blu-ray disc ... Read more...
Toshiba unveiled its new video enhancement technology for DVD with the introduction of the XD-E500 player. Standing for extended detail enhancement, the XDE technology reportedly goes beyond upconversion... Read more...
sofatronic, a leading developer and technology provider for DVD’, is releasing Kaleidoscope, a software platform for creating interactive applications on Blu-ray Discs. Working in a visual authoring... Read more...
CDA Datenträger Albrecht is increasing its Blu-ray production capacities at its Suhl location in Germany ready to ship for the upcoming high season... Read more...
Toshiba and Sony announced Wednesday that they have signed an agreement to form a joint venture to start making advanced chips in April. Toshiba is paying $835 million for Sony's high-performance semiconductor... Read more...
The high definition disc markets in both the USA and Europe continue to perform in line with expectations, with consumers expected to buy close to 45 million Blu-ray discs in the US this year – more... Read more...
Blu-ray Disc’s victory over HD-DVD is the first battle in a much longer struggle, according to Strategy Analytics. A major challenge lies ahead if the industry is to persuade hundreds of millions of... Read more...
A less upbeat assessment of the Blu-ray format to date is offered by Digital Tech Consulting (DTC) who does not expect Blu-ray to represent more than a third of all DVD devices sold five years from now... Read more...
In a move that many HD DVD movie owners can only hope other studios mimic, HDScape offers for a limited time, to exchange HDScape-purchased HD DVD titles for the same title in the Blu-ray format for only... Read more...
Internet TV has had little impact on British viewing habits, according to a Deloitte report that found that just 4% of the UK population consider it "very important" to be able to receive TV via the Internet... Read more...
Leading Quality Insurance provider Testronic Labs has just opened its interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD test facility providing third-party quality control of high definition software and integrated web ... Read more...
At this year’s Games Convention in Leipzig, arvato AG’s games task force introduced new POS marketing as well as digital sales solutions where the interactive pre-listening and catalog system media... 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.
