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News in Brief

THE INK was barely dry on the acquisition of London-based media research analysts Screen Digest by El Segundo, California-based iSuppli Corporation that iSuppli itself was acquired by Englewood, Colorado-headquartered IHS, Inc., with 4,400 employees in 30 countries.

TECHNICOLOR is closing its facility in North Hollywood, California, and will consolidate its release-print operations at its Montreal plant. The company did not disclose how many jobs would be lost in the US but said that more than 30% of its domestic exhibition services was now handled digitally.

THE BLU-RAY Disc technology is set to receive an Emmy Award for Technology and Engineering. Sony, Panasonic, Philips and TDK will receive the Emmy Award at CES 2011 during the 62nd Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards presentation. Since Blu-ray launched in 2006, more than 50 million Blu-ray players and receivers have been sold, with 1.4 billion Blu-ray discs produced.

WARNER Home Video is to sharpen its operations planning procedures to make forecasts within 10% of actual sales, according to CIO Magazine. The company says the changes will improve significantly on the existing forecasts that come within 40%. They will include standardising data definitions across business groups and moving data from individuals to a central Teradata warehouse. There will be more sales variables using SAS development tools that log criteria including genre title and prevailing box office trends, CIO said.

ACCORDING to a survey for the Direct Marketing Association, 91% of respondents who received a DVD/CD in the mail opened the mailer; 73% actually played the discs in their computer; 59% of respondents thought that a DVD was more secure than an email; respondents were 85% more likely to prefer receiving a DVD/CD in the mail than an email by the same advertiser; 89% of them said they would spend more time or the same amount of time with a direct mail piece if it included a DVD/CD.

SONIC Solutions and Dolby Laboratories have announced a collaboration to deliver Dolby Digital Plus through the RoxioNow entertainment platform. The RoxioNow platform encompasses the complete Sonic range of Hollywood to Home products for the creation, distribution of streamed and downloaded digital entertainment. Premium audio format Dolby Digital Plus is enabling the RoxioNow platform to bring high-quality surround sound experiences to more online entertainment services and a broad, multi-manufacturer network of connected devices.

A WEBSITE which sold more than £500,000 worth of counterfeit products has been shut down following an 18-month covert operation – the biggest of its kind in the North West on England. At its peak the website sold and delivered more than 30,000 titles. Around 5,000 films, 2,000 games and 1,000 counterfeit music CDs were seized, along with computers and equipment used for disc copying, printing and scanning.