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IN a further move signifying their commitment to emerging digital technologies, Cinram has appointed John Crosier to the newly-created position of Senior Vice President, Digital Architecture and Delivery. Crosier moves from Warner Bros. where he served as Executive Director of Global Operations. Until his appointment at Cinram, Crosier also acted as Digital Ambassador for the industry’s Digital Entertainment Group.

FORECASTS from market research company GfK expect 2011 sales figures for 3D sales to top one million units, and significantly beyond last year’s 200,000. “One can therefore speak of a successful market penetration with further growth potential,” says GfK senior analyst Juergen Boyny. “It is also positive to see that the sales of 3D Blu-ray Players, 3D AV Receivers and 3D Home Theatre Sets are developing parallel to 3DTV Set sales. In others words we can expect to see Germans equip their living rooms with 3D Home Cinema products this year.”

MPEG LA, the alternative one-stop patent licenses administrator, announced a call for patents essential to the VP8 video codec specification used to deliver video images. In order to participate in the creation or in the determination of the licensing terms for a joint VP8 patent license, any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec specification was invited to submit them for a determination of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators by 18 March 2011.

HAD Japan won its bid to host the 2022 World Cup, the world could well have been watching football matches as holographic broadcasts. The domestic public broadcaster NHK has committed to creating the first holographic TV by 2016. NHK reportedly earmarked some $4.3 billion for development on this technology, and is sponsoring research at companies such as Sony and Mitsubishi. It has also dispatched engineers to the US, where scientists have already generated basic holographic transmissions. Keio University’s Jun Murai, a scientist known as “the father of the Japanese Internet,” is advising NHK.

TESTRONIC LABS shatters testing milestones. The leader in quality assurance services for film and television, games, websites, and hardware and software, has announced two key milestones this month: the testing of its 5,500th Blu-ray disc SKU and the testing of its 75th 3D SKU. Testronic Labs says it is the only worldwide provider of Quality Assurance for portals, websites, cloud, digital files, mobile, apps, DTV, games, and optical discs.

PANASONIC has announced the introduction of two new 3D-compatible DIGA Blu-ray Disc recorders available only in the UK – the 500GB BWT800 model and the 250GB BWT700 model. Both machine feature twin HD terrestrial tuners, which enable customers to record digital broadcasts in full-HD quality. They can convert 2D Blu-ray or 2D DVD into 3D images, as well as convert a normal 2D digital broadcast TV programme into 3D in combination with a 3D TV and 3D glasses. Both machines record onto a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc.