Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
As worldwide DVD player shipments started to decline in 2006, shipments of DVD recorders continued to rise steadily, reports high-tech market research firm In-Stat... Read more...
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...
A joint operation between UK Lewisham Council, local police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) led to a successful raid on residential premises earlier this month. The address was under... Read more...
Following the release of the BDR-101A writer, the second Blu-Ray DVD burner from the Japanese company will support recording of BD-R/RE, DVD recordable/rewritable and also "legacy" CD-Rs. The drive will... Read more...
Germany's DVD boom seems to be reaching a plateau. The German Association for Audio-Visual Media (BVV) reports that, in the first half of 2007, the sector generated a total of €669 million, slightly... Read more...
The successor of the popular DVR-110 series, the DVR-111 / DVR-111D DVD burners from Pioneer will be released in Europe soon after mid-March. The device writes a full DVD disc in less than six minutes... Read more...
Imation Corp. has filed a Declaratory Judgment Action in the Federal District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota., requesting that the court resolve an ongoing dispute with Philips Electronics... Read more...
Steven Spielberg's latest opus, Munich, has missed the first round of nominations by members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) because they received a faulty screener unplayable... Read more...
Originally launched as the International Tape Association (ITA), later adopting its current name, the International Recording Media Association, IRMA has now formally adopted its new name, the Content... Read more...
Consumer spending on video reached a plateau in 2005, despite the fact that there were more videos sold than ever before... Read more...
German independent music distributor and vinyl specialist Cargo Records has extended its logistics contract with replicator kdg for a further two years... Read more...
Leading CD/DVD replication systems maker Singulus Technologies has completed the acquisition of competitor Steag HamaTech for $11.8 million... Read more...
The DVD6C Licensing Group announced that it has terminated the DVD6C Patent License Agreement with two Chinese companies – Chaoyue (Jiangsu) Digital and Shenzhen AKI Digital Electrical Appliance – ... Read more...
Sonic Solutions has introduced at the CES show in las Vegas AuthorScript DVD on Demand, the world’s first for secure, managed download-and-burn of video to DVD. The company says AuthorScript DoD enables... Read more...
Microsoft’s HD DVD evangelist Kevin Collins (pictured), has denied report that the company allegedly made payment to Paramount to exclusively back HD DVD in the high-def format war against Blu-ray... Read more...
Sonopress will be presenting its entire range of DualDisc services at the Midem 2006 trade show this week in Cannes... 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.
