Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
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Citing piracy concerns, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment will no longer create DVD screeners for retailers. Instead, advance copies of movies will be available on Fox's retail Web site for streaming... Read more...
According to new figures from Home Media Research, sales of movies on Blu-ray discs exceeded those on rival HD DVD format by a 2-to-1 margin in the United States in the first half of 2007... Read more...
Microsoft founder Bill Gates told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that beating software piracy in China and India and getting compliance up to US and European levels... Read more...
Blockbuster has acquired Movielink, one of the US's leading movie download services. The acquisition gives Blockbuster access to one of the largest libraries of downloadable movies and a large array of... Read more...
The Hong Kong authorities have closed down a website selling pirated animation DVD discs to Japanese customers through mail-order, the local Chinese daily Wen Wei Po reported... Read more...
Twenty-five years ago, on 17 August 1982, Royal Philips Electronics manufactured the world’s first Compact Disc at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, outside of Hanover, Germany. The invention of the... Read more...
The lifespan of recordable CDs/DVDs has been the subject of little discussion. Research out of IBM Deutschland suggests that magnetic tapes are still better long-term storage devices than optical discs... Read more...
German replicator CDA Datenträger has opened an onsite printing facility which went into full operation last week. The new production facility was officially inaugurated by the Thuringian Minister of... Read more...
Imation Corp, a worldwide leader in removable data storage media, is to acquire media manufacturer Memorex International in an all-cash transaction for $330 million... Read more...
DaTARIUS will be playing host, at its Austrian headquarters, to the DVD Forum's Verification Seminar on 14 September. The major themes of the seminar are Format Verification for DVD/HD DVD test specifications... Read more...
Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen, notorious for cracking the CSS system protecting DVDs, releasing a DeCSS software on the internet, has committed to launching a tool to crack the Advanced Access Content System... Read more...
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has announced that it will bring its first-ever collection of Pixar short films to Blu-ray this holiday season. On November 6, the studio will debut a single disc... Read more...
LOVEFiLM.com, already the UK’s number one online DVD rental service, and a pioneer in the movie download, or video-on-demand market, will launch a tailored movie download service to UK customers through... Read more...
At IFA in Berlin, Dolby Laboratories will be running a technical demonstration of its Volume technology for home audio systems, including audio/video receivers, home-theater-in-a-box systems, and stereo... Read more...
Malaysian authorities have crippled two DVD and video CD piracy rings, arresting 30 people and seizing nine duplicating machines worth 36m ringgit (£5.4m), a local newspaper reported this week... 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.
