Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
After 19 years in operation, Slough, UK-based full-service CD/DVD replicator Lynic Technology plc has gone into administration. An increasingly competitive market and a number of significant bad debts... Read more...
Leading independent children's producer and rights owner HIT Entertainment has licensed RipGuard DVD, which combined with Macrovision Analogue Content Protection (ACP) technology, offers protection from... Read more...
Sony DADC announced it will start an initiative for a production technology alliance for Blu-ray Disc dual layer. Detailed information will be presented at the European MEDIA-TECH Showcase & Conference... Read more...
Moser Baer is to acquire OM&T B.V., Philips-owned optical technology and R&D subsidiary. This acquisition will complement the existing cutting edge technology research being done in Moser Baer's R&D center... Read more...
MPEG LA held in New York the fourth meeting of essential Blu-ray Disc patent owners - currently consisting of 18 companies - for the purpose of creating a joint license providing fair, reasonable, non... Read more...
Figures from Muze, the leading provider of video release information to UK retailers, reveal that the amount of titles released in the UK on VHS was down in 2006 to just 128 titles, compared with 927 ... Read more...
As of 9 March 2007 London-based independent DVD label Network will move its distribution from Arvato Entertainment to Sony DADC Ltd... Read more...
New Medium Enterprises announced its first US-based distribution deal with PC Rush to bring its HD Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD) players to the US market for the first time... Read more...
Panasonic has just opened a testing laboratory for Blu-ray Disc content in Hollywood. The centre will verify that Blu-ray Disc content from movie studios meets technical specifications and that they can... Read more...
The French video distributors’ association SEV is favourable to a review of the so-called chronologie des médias, the law that fixes the release windows of a film across the various media platforms... Read more...
Sonopress’ North Carolina, USA facility has successfully mastered and replicated the first 3x DVD-ROM . 3x DVD-ROM is a variant of DVD-ROM, allowing for HD video and UDF 2.5 on the DVD format. 3x DVD... Read more...
A computer hacker known as Muslix64 posted on the Internet details of how he unlocked the Advanced Access Content System, the encryption mechanism that protects content on the next-generation HD DVD and... Read more...
The public availability of the encryption keys for next-generation Blu-ray and HD DVD movies comes a month after a hacker by the name of Muslix64 first cracked the Advanced Access Content System (AACS... Read more...
When LG Electronics launched its Super Multi Blue Player at the recent CES exhibition, it signaled an exit strategy from the "war" of the high-definition DVD formats, according to ABI Research. The analysts... Read more...
Top US adult video publisher Vivid Entertainment is releasing its first adult titles on the HD DVD format. Digital Playground, another leading adult publisher, is following suit by bringing out its first... Read more...
BRINGING entertainment to the consumer in a user-friendly fashion has been a persistent quest of both content producers and suppliers of delivery tools. That mobile operators want to join the bandwagon... 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.
