Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
"The picture is not as bleak as the press would like you to believe," claimed Magnus Hollo, MD, Sony Pictures Entertainment, at the recent Futuresource conference in London. The decline of DVD shows sign... Read more...
Testronic, the leader in quality assurance services for film and television, games, hardware, and software, unveiled its new brand identity. The new look provides an overhaul of the company brand and ... Read more...
Skyfall is the biggest selling title of any kind on video, but is also the biggest selling DVD, the biggest selling blu-ray and the biggest selling film on video - with total sales in excess of... Read more...
A new police unit aimed at targeting intellectual property crime in the UK has been announced by Intellectual Property Minister, Lord Younger and City of London Police Commissioner, Adrian Leppard (pictured... Read more...
Despite the much-trumpeted success of Netflix, many more people in the US are watching movies from their collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs (59%), and as many watch movies on discs that they rent from... Read more...
The generally-accepted view that cinema-goers who like the films they watch are likely to buy the DVD (or Blu-ray) has been confirmed in a new study by Canadian market researcher Ipsos Reid on behalf ... Read more...
Rather than hunkering down in their brick and mortar stores, traditional retailers are transitioning from their established role of selling and renting packaged DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and video and computer... Read more...
The High Fidelity Pure Audio Industry Group was launched last week in Dolby's headquarters in London to drive the development of Pure Audio - utilisation of the Blu-ray disc to offer original uncompressed... Read more...
Augsburg, Germany-based hardware and software solutions provider Silicon Philosophies has completed the acquisition of the Cinema Craft product line from Japanese developer Custom Technology Corporation... Read more...
A French court has ordered a 15-day suspension of the internet service of a user who engaged in downloading illegal content despite repeated warning letters sent by anti-piracy agency Hadopi... Read more...
On Tuesday, Walt Disney released Oz the Great and Powerful in a two-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo pack as well as a Blu-ray 3D disc in North America. Both versions also include a Digital Copy of the film... Read more...
Chocolate or strawberry-flavoured discs are not new, but Domino's Pizza has pushed the concept a step further: a DVD that starts smelling of fresh pizza when it spins in the DVD player. Also, as the disc... Read more...
The leader in plastic injection trays for the multimedia industry, French-based MIP Packaging, has acquired last month the packaging-related activities of Italian manufacturer Due-Ci... Read more...
Volfoni, specialist in 3D equipment, has acquired TriOviz, a French immersion-gaming company based in Paris and Los Angeles. TriOviz has created the first stereoscopic 3D middleware for top-selling games... Read more...
Universal Music is inviting on 20 June in London all parties with a stake - existing or potential - in the new format, provisionally called High Fidelity Pure Audio, which the world's largest music group... Read more...
Singulus Technology said it has received an order from global replicator Cinram for a 'sizable' number of BLULINE II machines. The Cinram Group runs already more than 130 DVD and Blu-ray Disc replication... 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.
