Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Fiji police confiscated about 4,000 DVD movies believed to be counterfeit which were sold on the last day of Fiji Showcase 2007 yesterday... Read more...
Due to fears that pirates would create high resolution copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray discs via unsecured analogue outputs, the Blu-Ray disc specification includes the ability to forcibly downscale a disc... Read more...
VDC Group, the UK's largest manufacturer of DVDs and CDs, has partnered with Filmon.com, a new full-scale media download portal and a division of 111 Pictures to offer clients a new VOD/internet distribution... Read more...
UK consumers will spend £1.7bn a year on downloading music, films and ebooks from the internet and on mobile phone content by the end of the decade, according to research for online payments system PayPal... Read more...
Driven by advancements in consumer electronics, and the growing popularity of home theater systems, the world DVD players and DVD recorders market is projected to reach 127.69 million units by the year... Read more...
The European Information and Communications Technology Association (EICTA) announced yet another logo that it hopes will help clear confusion from the minds of consumers as they migrate from traditional... Read more...
Citing market researcher GFK Group, Toshiba is claiming its HD DVD high-definition players have a 71 percent market share in retail sales in six European countries... Read more...
According to an internal memo, LG Electronics has dropped plans to launch its BD199 Blu-ray player this spring. LG sales VP Bob Perry said "In light of uncertainty in this early stage of the market for... Read more...
According to the IFPI, a policeman and a court official were among 35 people arrested in a major crackdown in the Italian town of Pescara. Other arrest were made in Rome... Read more...
The Chinese government is planning a major revamp of laws and regulations that protect intellectual property rights (IPR), according to a plan outlined last week by China's National IPR Protection Working... Read more...
The Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association (JIMCA), which represents the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in Japan, has distributed copies of an MPA-developed booklet outlining the... Read more...
Cinram reported an increase in consolidated revenue to $2,098.1 million in 2005, compared to $2,026.6 million in the prior year. Net earnings increased to $82.4 million, compared to $75.8 million or $... Read more...
Austria-based CD/DVD manufacturer kdg mediatech is now certified to use products from German copy protection developer X-Protect for its pressing plant and creative division MEDIASCOPE. The move enables... Read more...
The DaTARIUS Group will be inviting top companies from within the optical media manufacturing industry to the Blue Days (May 3-5) at the company’s headquarters in Reutte, Austria, where they will learn... Read more...
LG is about to launch later this quarter its latest Super Multi Blue hybrid drive – GGC-H20LI – reading both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. Several online sources have claimed LG is also to unveil... Read more...
Long-time Blu-ray backer, Disney, has hinted it may well now publish titles in both formats. During the company's annual meeting with shareholders last week, Disney CEO Robert Iger stated that HD DVD ... 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.
