Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Features
A question of intelligence
At CES 2012, consumers were inundated with 'smart' products: smart cameras, smart watches, smart washing machines, smart baby scales and a plethora of smart toilets. Indeed, you would have to delve far to find a product category that has not claimed some sort of sentient intelligence, noted ED BORDER, Research Analyst at IHS Screen Digest. Read More...
An industry executive speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of MIKE REDFERN, Sales Director at London Laser Company UK Ltd. Read More...
An industry executive speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It's the turn of PANOS BIDAS, General Manager of Authorwave Creations, based in Athens, Greece. Read More...
Connected TV, multi-screen, 'super-platform' - Strategy Analytics' 2012 predictions
After a successful set of predictions made a year ago, Strategy Analytics’ Digital Consumer team once again presents its thoughts on the likely highlights of the coming 12 months. Here are the twelve predictions and key questions to watch for in 2012. Read More...
INTERVIEW: Rovi - fingers on all links of the digital chain
"We are in the business of enabling our customers to do more with their content to the extent that Rovi's expanding range of solutions and technologies can provide them benefits,"? says TONY KNIGHT, Rovi's Senior Product Manager, in a wide-ranging interview with DVD Intelligence Publisher, JEAN-LUC RENAUD. Read More...
Industry consolidation and competition
So, EMI will disappear as an independent company. When one examines the last years of EMI, its fate ought not to have come as a surprise. These developments happen in all industries, but this time, the nature of the disappearance makes us listen attentively, says KLAUS OESTREICHER, Professor at IPE Management School in Paris. Read More...
Augmented Reality: where does packaged media fit?
Augmented Reality is still a new technology and could well fall by the wayside. However, it can revolutionise the way the market for physical products is seen by the buying public. ANDREW ELIA, President of Arishi Media Technologies, explains why AR provides a means to embrace a digital partnership where physical media still has a place. Read More...
An industry executive speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of ZOLTAN TUSSAI, Managing Director of Optical Disc Solutions, based in Bucharest, Romania. Read More...
An industry executive speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of MIGUEL CLARKE, CEO of Silicon Philosophies, based in Augsburg, Germany. Read More...
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Among many governments, NGOs and businesses, there is general agreement that counterfeiting and other commercial intellectual property rights infringements are wrong. The hard question is what to do about them. JIM BURGER, Partner at US law firm Dow Lohnes, examines the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Read More...
The slow, but inexorable march of 3D in the home
Now that 3D has broken into the market, what form will it take within the home? Will it be accessed on-demand or through a dedicated channel, streamed via IP or through a set-top box or Blu-ray Disc player, or viewed with passive polarised glasses or the active shutter variety? TOM MORROD, Head of TV Technology at IHS Screen Digest, looks for answers. Read More...
FEATURE: Physical media hanging on for dear life
Borders joins Tower Records and Virgin Megastore in the has-been entertainment retail chain category, while HMV attempts to reorganise. Journalist LARRY JAFFEE surveys the remaining bricks-and-mortar landscape on both sides of the Atlantic, and considers what further toll Internet delivery will take on packaged media. Read More...
Access to video: Don't forget the developing world
Video consumption is today driven by the internet. We can now browse huge catalogues of content, then choose what we want to watch, serve the popcorn, and start viewing without even having to get up off the couch. Which is fine, of course, if you have the internet. But, there are an awful lot of people in the world who don’t have access to it, says ANTHONY OWEN, from LTS Maroc, a digital media solution facility in Casablanca. Read More...
IFA Report: The saga of 3D
With the exception of LG, that gave pride of place to the new immersive standard, 3D did not dominate this year’s IFA – Berlin’s annual consumer electronics bazaar. Given that, last year, CE manufacturers were outmaneuvering each other to show off the nascent TV format, 3D’s presence this year was subdued, reports JEAN-LUC RENAUD. Here is what caught his eyes. Read More...
3D subtitling - a new deal beyond technology
3D subtitling calls for tectonic changes in all aspects of production and post-production of stereographic films and TV programmes. It requires new plots, new shooting approaches, new conventions and new workflows that will profoundly change the industry, says ALEXEY KOZOULYAEV, Founder and CEO of RuFilms, and a leading light on the subject. 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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