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News in Brief

SINGULUS has reached an agreement (Letter of Intent) with the Dutch VDL Groep, Eindhoven, on a possible outsourcing of parts of its mastering activities. The agreement was jointly signed recently and presented to the employees in the Netherlands. The agreement also includes the co-operation for current and future development projects, the continuous support of installed system at customers? sites, and new mastering business.

SINGULUS Technologies Optical Disc Customer Event invites professionals to the 2nd Customer Event Review on the Optical Disc Market 2012 and Outlook 2013-2014 and the Media-Tech Year-End Event on 4-5 December 2012 at Singulus Headquarters at Kahl/Main, Germany. It features speeches from experts from all around the globe. The event concludes with the Evening Networking Dinner. Details here.

TECHNAVIO's analysts forecast the Global 3D Flat Panel TV market to grow at a CAGR of 39.9% over the period 2011-2015. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increase in 3D broadcasting content. The market has also been witnessing the increase in enhancements by manufacturers. However, the lack of interoperability could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

US LEADING independent CD and DVD manufacturer, Disc Makers, said last month it broke two of its all-time disc replication records. The company replicated 4,380,296 CDs, an increase of over 600,000 units from October, 2011. This figure outpaces Disc Makers' prior all-time monthly CD & DVD replication record of 4,013,000 CDs, which had held since 2008. It also set a new all-time record for DVD production at 1,113,508 units.

THE FIRST company to get rid of floppy disk drives with its Macintosh computers over ten years ago, Apple looks like it will be the first to get rid of DVD optical disc drives (ODDs) as well. "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technologies. So, for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks," said Phil Schiller, senior VP of worldwide marketing at Apple, in an interview with Time magazine.