Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Results of a survey of high-volume DVD users conducted by online DVD trading company Peerflix have shown that only about one in five users may be tempted to buy high-definition DVD players or discs in... Read more...
A new law banning DVD, videocassette and CD sales by street vendors has been adopted in Russia late last week. The new law replaces a largely ignored measure introduced four years ago, reports UPI... Read more...
The UK Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has begun employing two very special black labradors for the express purpose of sniffing out pirated DVDs at Fedex's UK hub... Read more...
Blu-ray supporter Samsung is hedging its bets on the outcome in the war of hires formats by announcing the introduction of a dual-format HD player "in time for the holidays... Read more...
Sony will bring to market the world's first notebook PC equipped with a next-generation Blu-ray disk drive in Japan in June, a month behind Toshiba’s launch last week of laptop PCs with a rival drive... Read more...
The Paris Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court ruling that a right to private copy does not exist. Anti-copy technologies can be legally integrated into DVDs. The Court of Appeal says the ruling conforms... Read more...
Dolby Audio Technologies for HD Entertainment... Read more...
Some 20 DVD titles fitted with Sony DADC's proprietary ARccOS copy protection system are affected by an incompatibility problem with a small number of DVD players. Titles include Open Season, Casino Royal... Read more...
Toshiba's CE sales increased 14 percent to $21.7 billion during fiscal year 2005, while profits increased at just about the same rate... Read more...
A Taiwanese company is using its employees to pose as online buyers to nab people selling pirated foreign films on the Internet in an unusual way of controlling the fake DVD market, a news report said... Read more...
Verbatim has launched a 2.4 x speed 8cm DVD+R Double Layer disc that has almost double the storage capacity of previous media. It will be available in a 5-pack jewel case from June... Read more...
Furthering the consolidation of the recordable optical media market, Imation agreed to purchase TDK's media business brand in a cash and stock deal worth up to $370 million. TDK will retain its R&D, manufacturing... Read more...
New Medium Enterprises just announced that it will release over 100 HD titles on Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD) in the United States later this year, which will include several Broadway shows... Read more...
Optical disc maker CMC Magnetics has reached a settlement with Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) over a DVD patent infringement lawsuit filed by Matsushita in the United States District Court... Read more...
Following Microsoft's official announcement to offer an HD DVD drive as a peripheral to the Xbox 360 by the end of the year, Microsoft's executives said that the Xbox 360 games will not ship on HD DVD... Read more...
Toshiba Corporation, on behalf of the DVD6C Licensing Group, announced today that it has won a further legal victory against former licensee Citron Electronics, a supplier to CyberHomeEntertainment... 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.
