Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
The Blu-ray Disc Association is being accused by some of dragging its heels over adding support for 4K but, as BILL FOSTER from Digital Decoded explains, there are several good reasons why launching another... Read more...
Research published by the British Video Association, conducted by Kantar Worldpanel, shows the continuing importance of shopping in the high street to the video industry. The BVA revealed that more than... Read more...
NetNames has produced a study that provides an estimate of the shape and size of the piracy universe. Absolute infringing bandwidth use increased by 159.3% between 2010 and 2012, from 3,690 petabytes ... Read more...
Consumer uptake of 3D hardware continues apace, with the market on track to achieve 157.7 million 3DTV sales in 2017, up from a forecast of 59.3 million for 2013, according to a new report from Futuresource... Read more...
The British Video Association has announced that its Annual General Meeting and Reception will take place on Tuesday 19 November. Iain Wright MP, shadow minister for competitiveness and enterprise (pictured... Read more...
After a four-year period of declines and slowed growth between 2008 and 2011 (CAGR -0.2%), total worldwide consumer spending on transactional movies recovered in 2012 to reach $62.4bn, surpassing the $... Read more...
The new police unit aimed at targeting intellectual property crime, announced by UK Intellectual Property Minister Lord Younger in July and officially launched last week, carried out its first raids and... Read more...
Digital movie online operator CinemaNow has launched a disc-to-digital service in Canada that lets consumers take their DVD collections to participating retailers, convert them to a digital format for... Read more...
Infringement is a minority activity, according to the results of a research programme published by UK communication regulator Ofcom and funded by The Intellectual Property Office on consumers' behaviour... Read more...
German disc replication tool maker Singulus Technologies has developed a new replication line under the product name BLULINE III for the manufacturing of triple-layer Blu-ray Discs with a storage capacity... Read more...
Disney and Sony Pictures Entertainment plan to let South Koreans rent movies via video-on-demand while they are still playing in cinemas, reports The Wall Street Journal. Because it kips the theatrical... Read more...
Toronto-based global replicator and supply chain service provider Cinram, a Najafi Companies affiliate, has acquired Saffron Digital, a specialty firm that provides and manages digital media content, ... Read more...
Recent GfK data released by the German home video industry body BVV show first half year results reaching an all-time high. Video turnover for Jan-June 2013 hit €798 million, surpassing by some margin... Read more...
DVD will be sent where mankind has not (yet) gone when NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, scheduled to launch in November, will carry over 1,100 personal three-line poems, ... Read more...
The Industry Trust for IP Awareness, which represents the film, TV and video industry in the UK, has joined forces with the British Board of Film Classification to launch a campaign to provide clarity... Read more...
Following its filing for Chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy protection three months ago "to cleanse itself of legacy issues, including financial, legal and regulatory matters," video asset management solutions... 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.
