Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Features
DVD - Classic films' new lease of life
Hammer was once the most successful British film company in history. Then it got into difficulties. DVD has been our saviour and it forms a significant component in our strategic thinking for the future, says CEO TERRY ILOTT. Read More...
Guide to exporting DVD-Video titles
Many overseas companies will want to make their own localised DVDs as they will, in most instances, sell better. The level of creative control the rights owner wants should be stated from the outset, explains JIM BANTING. Read More...
Unlocking DVD-Video interactive capability
Despite the phenomenal success of DVD, there is a closely guarded secret in the industry that I’d like to share with you. You could be forgiven for thinking that the DVD player that has pride of place beneath your TV is nothing more than a glorified video player. But you’d be wrong, says STUART GREEN. Read More...
Call for level-playing field on royalties
Replicators of DVD discs who, like kdg mediatech, pay royalty fees and, in so doing, are disadvantaged in the marketplace, are angry, laments PIERRE-ANTOINE BERTHOLD, CEO OF kdg mediatech. Count me among them. I object to being forced to compete with replicators that do not carry the same costly obligation and are obliged to pay no royalties to the so-called 3C and 6C groups. Read More...
Independents' DVD-making economics
There’s a Hollywood wizard sitting on my desktop, although it’s not the Harry Potter kind. For just €50 the wizard will encode video and audio, auto-generate chapters, add ‘extras’, create a DVD menu and even offer its own parental classification notice. BOB AUGER explains. Read More...
The growing threat of optical disc piracy
The MPA estimates that the US film industry loses over $3.5 billion a year due to what we term “hard goods piracy” – primarily, today, the manufacture and sale of pirate DVDs, VCDs, DVD-Rs and CD-Rs. About $1 billion of that loss is due to such piracy in Europe, worries DARA MACGREEVY. Read More...
Cappi Frenger - View from WMME
CAPPI FRENGER, WMME's Director of International Services, tells JEAN-LUC RENAUD the story of the company so far, how it is copying with a changing marketplace, and the corporate vision. Read More...
Getting it right in multichannel sound
MIKE NIELSEN, Producer and Surround Sound Engineer at London studio Strongroom, explains to KAREN FAUX why working in multichannel is like working in full colour as opposed to the monochrome of stereo and underlines that attention to detail is all. Read More...
Boom in Music DVD on the horizon
OLIVIER ROBERT-MURPHY, Vice President DVD International, Universal Music, shares with JEAN-LUC RENAUD his views about the future of Music DVD and how his company will capitalise on this. Read More...
DVD in Scandinavia
ANTHONY OWEN, Managing Director of DVD Scandinavia Angel,provides JEAN-LUC RENAUD a detailed picture of the growing DVD market in Scandinavia, and why DVD is an ideal support for TV programmes. Read More...
Killing the Golden Goose
Although European Blu-ray Disc sales tripled in 2009, year-end sales figures fell short of pre-recessionary forecasting, leading to a significant over-supply of discs. Was the industry's reaction to this situation – to slash the price of the new format – in the best interests of the market? RICHARD COOPER, Senior Analyst at Screen Digest, takes a hard look. Read More...
Industry practitioners speak
WILL TIMBERS, founder of London-based production and authoring house Pink Pigeon, shares his views on things past, present and yet to come with JEAN-LUC RENAUD, publisher of DVD Intelligence. 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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