Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Piracy is choking Europe's cultural industries, according to a study entitled The contribution of the creative industries to the EU economy in terms of GDP and employment published this week by... Read more...
Last month, the Industry Trust for IP Awareness and Universal Pictures launched a Dracula Untold trailer in cinemas nationwide in the UK. This is the 17th collaboration as part of the industry'... Read more...
Swiss packaged media manufacturer Adon Production and Sony DADC, the leading disc and digital service provider, offering digital and physical supply chain solutions, software services, and optical media... Read more...
The latest data from Kantar Worldpanel, for the 12 weeks ending 6 July 2014, shows that traditional high street names such as GAME and HMV are beginning to steal back share from the supermarkets... Read more...
From our correspondent BOB AUGER.Day three at IBC 2014 and weekend visitors throng the aisles as they try to understand where the media hardware and software business is going over the next 12 ... Read more...
From our correspondent BOB AUGER. According to the organisers, almost 53,000 people attended IBC in Amsterdam in September 2013. This year promises to be at least as busy - no wonder it is so hard... Read more...
From our correspondent BOB AUGER. The crowds arrived on cue at the opening of IBC 2014 on Friday, to find an unfamiliar landscape. The construction of yet another exhibition hall alongside Hall... Read more...
From our correspondent BOB AUGER. We have all come a long way since the early days of the International Broadcasting Convention, yet still the crowds flock to the RAI Centre Amsterdam, ready to... Read more...
In the context of the climate change debate, the ecological footprint generated by industrial activities has become, of late, a subject of scholarly examination and regulatory attention in several countries... Read more...
Netflix has begun streaming content in 4K. Amazon's getting ready to start doing the same. Samsung is partnering with practically everyone to stream Ultra High-Def (UHD) via its products, writes Chris... Read more...
A man was sentenced today to 33 months imprisonment for recording a blockbuster film in a cinema, uploading it to the internet, and producing and selling copies to the public... Read more...
OEM, Charlotte, North Carolina-based optical disc manufacturer and supply-chain provider, has acquired Germany's CDA GmbH, a manufacturer of optical storage media as well as a leader in the field of polymer... Read more...
Alpha Duplication Ltd, the UK's largest printer and duplicator of CD, DVD and Blu-ray, have announced that they have reached the standards necessary to be accredited by the Federation Against Copyright... Read more...
While Electronic Sell-Through (EST) continues to experience double-digit growth, it still only comprises one-tenth of all transactional home entertainment revenue. It comes in behind Blu-ray discs, kiosk... Read more...
The overall US video entertainment market (subscription Pay-TV, box office, packaged home video, Pay-TV VoD and paid-for online video) continues to grow in low single digits, reaching $120 billion in ... Read more...
Recent statistics from SoundScan in the US show that vinyl sales have grown by around 40% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2013. This echoes UK statistics from the British ... 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.
