Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Cinram, a Najafi Companies affiliate, has acquired JVC America (JAI), the games software division of JVC Americas Corp., a subsidiary of JVC KENWOOD Corporation. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is ... Read more...
Worldwide VOD rentals (OTT and pay TV operator), electronic sell-through (EST), and DVD/Blu-ray disc sales are expected to grow 40% from 2013 to 2019 - growing from $30.6 billion in 2013 to over $43 billion... Read more...
The BBC has seen details of a deal struck between the Motion Picture Association, the British music industry lobby BPI and UK internet service providers to combat piracy. Per this agreement, BT, Sky, ... Read more...
After a weak performance from the global TV set market in 2013 - with revenues and shipments down 4% and 2.6% respectively - the segment is expected to return to growth in 2014, according to a new strategic... Read more...
Most (86%) global respondents who watch TV indicate they usually watch TV programming "live", although other popular modes of watching are catching on like streaming or downloading from a computer (27... Read more...
A record-breaking 84% of all online content acquired in Spain is pirated. The number of Spaniards illegally accessing digital content now exceeds 51%. Last year, the value of online pirated content topped... Read more...
After spending almost two decades trying to make TVs flatter, curved TVs emerged again last year. Curved TV display shipments are now forecast to reach nearly 800,000 units in 2014, and are expected to... Read more...
Overall video entertainment spend in the UK is expected to reach £10 billion by 2018, averaging 2% annual growth between 2014 and 2018. Pay-TV and subscription VoD services will be the key drivers... Read more...
Consumers copying and sharing digital files have been blamed for a potentially catastrophic decline in certain markets. But why do consumers copy? And is it as economically harmful as often thought? CREATe... Read more...
UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB is adding a 'Buy and Keep' download-to-own service to its existing pay-per-view film rental operation Sky Store and, in doing so, challenge Apple's iTunes Store and other... Read more...
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) based in the City of London Police has called upon advertisers and brand holders to continue to support its work to tackle Intellectual Property crime... Read more...
Samsung Electronics announced a strategic partnership with Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox to establish "a secure and sustainable" next-generation Ultra High Definition (UHD) content ecosystem. The ... Read more...
"US Census Bureau voter statistics and recent Nielsen-measured data confirms the majority of American overwhelmingly choose television as their primary source for video viewing," says Steve Lanzano, President... Read more...
Sony and Panasonic announced they have formulated specifications for their 'Archival Disc,' which they position as a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, "with the objective... Read more...
With Blockbuster having pulled the plug on its DVD-by-mail business earlier this year and video streaming movie service Netflix registering a 16% loss of its DVD subscribers over the past year - from ... Read more...
ZOOsubs, the innovative cloud subtitling service delivered by ZOO Digital has, since its launch nine months ago, won favor with three major Hollywood film studios. In this short time, the number of client... 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.
