Germany’s Infodisc Technology, Europe’s first independent replicator to invest in the Blu-ray format in 2007, has expanded its portfolio with Infopictures GmbH, a service to support licensees to publish DVD and Blu-ray products. Infopictures complements Infomedia Multi Media Services, the authoring, encoding and mastering service, the Infodisc group set up in 2008.

Infopictures brings under one roof all services of the Infodisc group, up to the point of a DVD or Blu-ray release. “The concept will appeal to all publishers and licensees,” says Managing Director Michael Gutowski. “ It is of special interest for licensees who own suitable content, but do not have the necessary personnel, equipment or know-how to release it.”

“The service of Infopictures will also be of interest to those major publishers with an extensive catalogue. They always hold licenses that are not released for various reasons and are mostly sublicensed. Infopictures offers to take care of these titles,” Gutowski adds. “Companies that hold licenses, but do not commercialise them themselves can delegate all organisational tasks necessary for a release to Infopictures and concentrate on their core strengths. Furthermore, Infopictures offers to test archived titles for their marketability in order to generate new sales for promising titles.”

The financing model ought to be attractive to all licensees because financial risks are shared between both parties. “Transparency of our costs will of course be guaranteed. The finished product will either be delivered back to the content owner if he wants to release it himself, or we offer to take over sales and marketing on his behalf. We are flexible enough to find a suitable solution for every title,” Gutowski continues.

The comprehensive service is accompanied by a technical innovation developed by Infodisc – COPY-TO-GO, which provides a number of device-optimised files of a movie, which can be transferred directly to mobile devices like Play Station Portable, iPhone or Blackberry. The product is also extendable to all other devices like cell phones or applications like Windows Media Player. As the resolution and the format are already optimised to the specific handheld device, the installation requires only a few steps.

“With these new services, the “Info” group takes another step towards becoming a Full Service Provider. From development via license administration, product management and authoring to production and release all operational sequences are intra-corporate,” boasts Gutowski.

Infodisc says it will unveil in April a new service related to digital distribution.

Story filed 13.03.10