Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
At MEDIA-TECH's Barcelona conference and showcase, Sony DADC announced it has started an initiative to develop manufacturing technology and production equipment for Blu-ray's Dual Layer version offering... Read more...
TDK has announced the availability of the world's first thermal printable BD-R Blu-ray Disc media to European customers. TDK has extended its partnership with Rimage to bring its printable surface BD-... Read more...
French group Thomson, Technicolor parent, which has eight research and development centres worldwide, wants to locate a ninth centre in India in coming years, its chairman said... Read more...
Following the recent operation by Hackney, London, police and local council targeting prolific pirate DVD sellers read story, six defendants were given five month prison sentences, suspended for 2 years... Read more...
AudioDev has acquired STEAG ETA-Optik GmbH from HamaTech owned by Germany's Singulus Technologies. The acquision enhances the Swedish test equipment maker 's position in optical media while adding new... Read more...
Axxicon Moulds recently installed several moulds for production of the VCD-HD format... Read more...
Sony’s PS3 console – to be launched in Europe next month - is expected to make up 52 per cent of all HD players by 2010, with sales in excess of 28 million, predicts UK-based market analysts Understanding... Read more...
Austria-based test equipment maker DaTARIUS has been chosen by New Medium Enterprises to develop a range of quality control analyzers for the HD VMD (High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc) format... Read more...
Last year, Hollywood studios and technology firms reached an agreement for the storage of films downloaded legally from the Internet onto DVDs using the CSS encryption standard. At the end of January, ... Read more...
Toshiba Corporation, in its capacity as licensing agent for the DVD6C licensing group – the nine-strong body of leading developers of DVD technologies and formats – responded to recent press reports... Read more...
Two British men have been charged after 6kg of ecstasy tablets were found inside a DVD player in luggage at Brisbane Airport. Customs officers allegedly discovered a quantity of drugs on the men, aged... Read more...
Shares in EMI Group plc plunged Wednesday after the company issued its second profits warning in as many months, blaming the below expectations trading on steep declines in the North American market for... Read more...
Two men and four women arrested last week in Hackney, East London, have been ordered for deportation. Sitting at Thames Magistrates Court, District Judge Stephen Dawson remanded the six in custody until... Read more...
Britain’s biggest cinema chain, 840-screen Odeon, has pulled hit comedy Night at the Museum from their screens in protest against Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox’s plans to rush out the DVD... Read more...
Blu-ray disc has now sold more units than its HD DVD competitor, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. "Blu-ray has racked up a slight lead in unit sales – 100 units to every 98.71 units of HD... Read more...
The Lite-On IT Corporation will acquire 49% of Philips & BenQ Digital Storage Corporation from BenQ Corporationof Taiwan. PBDS, a joint venture company of Royal Philips Electronics and BenQ, will be renamed... 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.
