Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
A new study estimates that the value of international and domestic trade in counterfeit and pirated goods in 2013 was $923bn to $1.13tn, forecast to reach $1.9tn to $2.81tn by 2022. The global value of... Read more...
Worldwide, households spent a combined total of $251.5 billion on home video and pay-TV in 2016 – up by 3% compared to 2015 – according to Futuresource Consulting’s latest annual report on global... Read more...
Snell Advanced Media (SAM), a broadcast technology specialist, found that despite the pressure for broadcasters to invest in 4K technology, 64% of Americans still don’t know what 4K is. SAM also found... Read more...
LG and Sony both confirmed to Cnet that none of their new TV sets released this year, even high-end models such as their new OLED TVs, will be able to show 3D movies and TV shows... Read more...
The availability of a movie on video streaming services cannibalizes sales of physical media. This is the general conclusion of the first academic study, published this month, that investigates the extent... Read more...
Going by 2016 sales figures – 110 titles, 2 million units in the US alone – the Blu-ray Disc Association is buoyant about the future of Ultra HD Blu-ray. The Digital Entertainment Group forecasts ... Read more...
Investment by new digital services like Spotify, Sky, Amazon, Apple Music and Google has resulted in sales of music, video and games running £1bn ahead of where they were just four years ago, according... Read more...
Figures released by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) based on data from The Official Charts Company and IHS Markit show that UK consumer spend in the video category rose by 2.2% ... Read more...
While Netflix has become the pre-eminent online streaming – and now, in some markets, downloading – TV/film service, some 4.3 million of its members still subscribe to its DVD rental service. The ... Read more...
French physical media market falls 7.7% in volume and 13.7% in value during the first nine months of 2016, according to the latest statistics from the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC... Read more...
The Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) has recognized Sonopress with its “Best Digital Product or Service Innovation“ award for the launch of the Ultra HD Blu-ray 100 optical disc... Read more...
Amazon has made the Prime Video streaming service available worldwide, following the global launch of Netflix in January 2016. As of 14 December 2016, Amazon Prime Video was available in 200 countries... Read more...
2016 was the biggest year in digital games and playable media ever, according to SuperData’s latest report. The vast market, hitting $91bn this year, is growing at tremendous rates and incorporating... Read more...
United Arab Emirates-based Falcon Technologies International, a premium manufacturer of professional optical data storage media and archival solutions provider, has launched its new Smart Glossy printable... Read more...
Worldwide demand for home audio devices continues to gather momentum, with the category outperforming the wider CE market and on track to finish 2016 at 102 million units shipped and close to $11 billion... Read more...
The latest data from Kantar Worldpanel, for the 12 weeks ending 5 July, showed a brighter picture for the physical entertainment market as several key retailers grew in value on last year and the rate... 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.
