Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Warner Bros. is the second studio to make movies available online in Europe, following in Universal's footsteps... Read more...
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Dan Glickman has recently claimed that the AACS support behind managed copy would be ready before the end of the year. A spokesperson for the HD ... Read more...
ZOOtech, the interactive DVD technology pioneer, announced an agreement with educational publisher Scholastic Media to use the company's DVD-EXTRA STUDIO system for new interactive DVD titles, including... Read more...
MPEG LA, the one-stop technology standards patent licensing, issued a call for patents and patent applications that are essential to the HD DVD standard in order to facilitate creation of a joint HD DVD... Read more...
The Australian police will have the power to issue on-the-spot fines to pirate DVD and compact disc hawkers under new laws. Sellers of pirate discs and movies could also be forced to repay what they earn... Read more...
New Medium Enterprises, developer of the red lased-based HD-VMD disc format and Optikey Inc, an emerging leader in the anti-counterfeit industry, have reached an understanding to jointly release an unforgeable... Read more...
Sony and Panasonic have developed a new format – called AVCHD – aimed at high-definition camcorders and makes it possible to store HD content on currently available 3.2-inch DVDs... Read more...
New Medium Enterprises, developer of the HD VMD hi-def format, signed a lucrative content deal with film distributor Scanbox Entertainment at the Cannes Film Festival in France. The partnership ensures... Read more...
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president Benjamin Feingold said his studio's first batch of Blu-ray Disc releases will be ready 23 May, as planned. "But the majority of our retail base and hardware ... Read more...
NXP Semiconductors, a Netherlands-based company founded by Philips, and Kestrel Wireless have joined forces on a solution to solve the problem of DVD theft throughout the supply chain... Read more...
US independent hi-def disc manufacturer Blue Ray Technologies is announcing its multi-tiered entry into what many expect to be the multi-billion dollar Blu-ray games arena... Read more...
Philips Electronics has introduced a new consumer logo for its environmentally friendly and safe consumer product range – the Philips Green Tick (pictured... Read more...
By JIM BOTTOMS, Director of Understanding & Solutions... Read more...
A mature DVD market, wafer-thin margins and professional tools now accessible to all would-be authors are putting the squeeze on established production houses. ROB PINNINGER, an experienced studio manager... Read more...
German optical disc replicator CDA Datentrager Albrechts has increased its commitment to counteract the current trend of illegal piracy by licensing and offering the most up-to-date effective copy protection... Read more...
Worship the producers of DVD documentaries. Securing rights for material from disparate sources can be an excruciating endeavour. Professional photographer and multimedia producer CHRIS SATTLBERGER knows... 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.
