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Features
An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of STEFAN BOCK, CEO of msm-studios, a premium service provider for mastering, post-production and media creation, based in München, Germany. Read More...
An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of MATHEW GILLIAT-SMITH, CEO of Fortium Technologies, a leading provider of copy protection and fingerprint identification software for the film, entertainment and broadcast industries based in the UK. Read More...
An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of ANDRZEJ MACKIEWICZ, CEO of disc manufacturer TAKT S.J. in Bolesław, Poland. Read More...
An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of IAN BRENCHLEY, Managing Director of authoring and post-production studio Metropolis in London. Read More...
An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of JAKOB SKARIN, Founder & CEO of packaging design company Jakebox AB in Sweden. Read More...
Rising to the green challenge - a thinner disc
Technological advances, ecological awakening, retailers’ green policy and government regulations coalesce to making carbon footprint-busting discs an ever more attractive proposition. WILHELM F MITTRICH, CEO of EcoDisc Technology, explains the concept and identifies the market opportunities. Read More...
Striving in the corporate market
From VHS, CD, DVD and Blu-ray authoring, replication and duplication to encoding for digital cinema, VOD, Internet and mobile, not forgetting archiving, SYMON ROUE, Chairman of re:fine, explains why the one-stop shop approach he has taken was a successful strategy to strive in the corporate market. Read More...
Holography - Quo Vadis?
Has anything happened in the past three years that might bring holographic discs closer to reality? MEGUMI KOMIYA, Head of Research at Globalcom, takes stock of the latest developments, pinpointing promising advances. Read More...
From vinyl to VOD - how to strive in a changing marketplace
French independent family-owned replicator MPO has been a key player in the development of virtually all home entertainment media. Looking to the future, LOIC DE POIX, the company Chairman, tells JEAN-LUC RENAUD why the industry should focus all its energy promoting the optical disc format itself, not just Blu-ray. Read More...
DVD users and the rise of online video services
The ways in which people can watch video have exploded in the last couple of years as video streaming and download websites and services have proliferated. DAVID MERCER, from Strategy Analytics, looks at what DVD users are doing Read More...
Towards a new world order in mobile content
Social networks and mobile applications are putting immense pressure on content owners to quickly roll out mobile content services that provide affordable and exhaustive content selections over-the-air. Screen Digest’s JULIEN THEYS analyses the challenges. Read More...
Get those glasses ready - 3D is headed for your living room
A by-product of the migration to digital projection in cinemas is a re-emergence of a 1950s phenomenon... 3D movies. Hollywood now wants to bring the 3D experience into your home. BILL FOSTER, Senior Technology Consultant at Futuresource, explains. Read More...
Industry practitioners speak
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of LEON KOHLEN, Founder CEO of authoring pioneer i-Frame in The Netherlands. Read More...
The view from a systems reseller
Systems resellers are the glue that ties toolmakers with creators. Cambridge-based ROM Data Ltd is such a company. STEVE POWER, its CEO, shares his view of the market he is serving. Read More...
Industry practitioners speak
HARALD GERICKE, Managing Director of platin media productions, a German authoring and post-production studio, shares his views on things past, present and yet to come with JEAN-LUC RENAUD, publisher of DVD Intelligence. Read More...
Do you own what you bought?
Do you own all the discs in your collection? Be honest – aren’t there a few that you ‘borrowed’ from friends and haven’t yet got around to returning? What about those DVDs that you always meant to give back to the neighbour, but now she’s moved away…?
You can play discs, watch them, even copy them, without anyone stopping you. Of course it would be illegal, but is it really likely that the Serious Crime Squad is going to break down the door and confiscate your library of Bob the Builder DVDs because you made copies to give to the kids?
We are used to physical media ‘just working’, regardless of where it came from, how long you’ve had it and what technical standards it uses. Sure, CD-i players are hard to come by these days, but in the main, once acquired, most hardware lets you access the original content forever.
Imagine then that you put your disc in the trusty player you bought in 1994 and a message appears “You don’t have the rights to play this disc”. The player is right – you picked it up at that party you gatecrashed in the 1990s and ‘discovered’ it a week later.
Guiltily you try another disc, and another, and realise that all the discs in your collection, paid for or not, are blocked.
Not only that but all your friends are experiencing the same problem – none of their CDs or DVDs work anymore, every unit in the player park is revolting rather than revolving.
Wow, that was a nightmare you’d rather not have again. You wake in a sweat and make a coffee, grateful that this was only a bad dream. Selecting the Music Video you downloaded last week on your Media Centre PC, déjà vu spoils your view: “You do not have the rights to play this track.”
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