Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Features
The staggering of international releases
Screen Digest has examined the changing pattern of DVD release strategies in Europe between 2002 and the first half of 2005.The aim of this analysis was to determine to what extent studios are moving towards simultaneous releases for key titles and what impact this trend is having on the staggering of international theatrical and DVD release dates. JEAN-LUC RENAUD reports. Read More...
Indie producer tells all about DVD distribution
ANDREW PARKINSON is a writer/director/producer of low budget horror films whose third feature Venus Drowning has just been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. After making Super8 films he moved to London to start work in Post Production at the BBC. He tells JEAN-LUC RENAUD, from DVD Intelligence, his story so far. Read More...
Poland - the rise and rise of DVD
In Poland, the DVD player was, until recently, a gadget for the rich people only. The average cost of a player was about 2,500 PLN (620 Euro) four years ago – a time when the average monthly salary was about 512 Euro – and the cost of DVD title was 25-22 Euro. ANNA DOBROWOLSKA reports. Read More...
Commissioner's guide to DVD production
So, you’re an open-minded video producer who has the foresight to realise that there’s a lot to be gained by distributing your material on a DVD, you should read SARAH BARDLEY's guide. Read More...
The DVD treatment of classic movies
The DVD experience has created a new audience with a new attitude – one that demands that every DVD version of a movie should offer more than the VHS-like replication of a movie, says KEN BARNES. The “extras” represent a unique selling proposition in DVD-Video and it is in this area that the industry has room for improvement. Read More...
How the SteelBook was born
SteelBook is a new packaging for high profile music, video and games releases. It offers a full range of design possibilities including printing on both the exterior and interior, is something of a triumph of industrial design. JEAN-LUC RENAUD tells the story of its making. Read More...
Strategies to fight entertainment piracy
The DVD industry, hailed in 2004 as the most successful consumer electronic entertainment platform ever launched, now faces a year of challenges where new media and consumer perception may become significant catalysts for change.SIMON MEHLMAN examines one of the key forces at play – entertainment piracy – and what measures are being considered by content owners and publishers to protect their product. Read More...
Multilingual DVD: The art of subtitling
The Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyam recently edited a collection of essays in a book entitled Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film in which he stated that, “Every film is a foreign film to someone.” It’s a phrase that seems relevant nowhere more than in the world of DVD and yet is so often overlooked in today’s cut-and-thrust DVD production cycle, says JAMES GARDNER. Read More...
High Definition TV and DVD's future
The High Definition Television picture has evolved considerably over the past year. The global audience for HDTV broadcasts more than doubled during 2004, from 4.7 million households to nearly 11 million. Nearly all of this growth originates in the US and Japanese markets. Other HDTV markets are still in their infancy, although they will begin to have an impact during 2005. DAVID MERCER explains. Read More...
Home Video Server - a DVD-friendly kit
The tale of the little Dutch boy who saved Holland by putting his finger in the dyke is widely known, though the story was an invention by American author, Mary Mapes Dodge, who included it in her 1865 book The Silver Skates. The account of the young innocent who prevented disaster captured popular imagination and, although one finger never stopped a flood, it is quoted whenever anyone tries to evade the inevitable, recalls BOB AUGER. Read More...
How to dispose of optical discs
A key area of activity in ensuring the legitimacy of packaged media available in the marketplace is the disposal of a product that has been confiscated or is otherwise no longer marketable.We talk to NICO OSSE of ReSolve, a Dutch-based organisation and a leader in this field. Read More...
A personal journey into marketing DVD
KLAUS OESTREICHER shares his personal experiences from some 20 years in sales and customer services. Creating markets for special-interest product on four continents and lengthy discussions with key accounts and distributors familiarised him with the many problems that his partners face in their daily business. Read More...
Coping with change - View from the top
JULIAN DAY, founder and CEO of leading independent new media and authoring house DGP, in London, explains why creating a DVD requires multi-faceted staff with new sets of skills. Read More...
The saga of storage - quest for speed
“Cheap huge capacity drives will become the home network entertainment solution this year, wired or wireless," says IT consultant ANDY MARKEN. "Think of a small enclosure sitting on top of your home theater kit with all of your music, photo albums, personal videos, archived TV series and movies stacked up.” Read More...
Media packaging - where has planning gone?
Unbelievably, this year 2007, there is a shortage of boxes. This is the result of an absence of planning, argues MARTIN WATSON, Sales Director at Coral Products. Customers need to better understand the suppliers' modus operandi. Read More...
On predicting the future
Predicting the future, let alone the future of packaged media, is a perilous exercise, and possibly counter-productive, as the exercise closes doors rather than keep them open, argues JEAN-LUC RENAUD, DVD Intelligence publisher. Consider that: Apple was left nearly for dead 15 years ago. Today, it became the world's most valuable technology company, topping Microsoft.
Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir (the cinema is an invention without any future) famously claimed the Lumière Brothers some 120 years ago. Well. The cinématographe grew into a big business, even bigger in times of economic crisis when people have little money to spend on any other business.
The advent of radio, then television, was to kill the cinema. With a plethora of digital TV channels, a huge DVD market, a wealth of online delivery options, a massive counterfeit underworld and illegal downloading on a large scale, cinema box office last year broke records!
The telephone was said to have no future when it came about. Today, 5 billion handsets are in use worldwide. People prioritize mobile phones over drinking water in many Third World countries.
No-one predicted the arrival of the iPod only one year before it broke loose in an unsuspecting market. Even fewer predicted it was going to revolutionise the economics of music distribution. Likewise, no-one saw the iPhone coming and even fewer forecast the birth of the developers' industry it ignited. And it changed the concept of mobile phone.
Make no mistake, the iPad will have a profound impact on the publishing world. It will bring new players, and smaller, perhaps more creative content creators.
And who predicted the revival of vinyl?
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