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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated April 1, 2007 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
1 -
The Departed Warner Home Video
The DVD Forum, the international organization that defines formats for DVD products and technologies, celebrated its official 10th anniversary at the annual general meeting of its members held in Tokyo. The Forum, which has been hailed as a model for collaboration between the consumer electronics, IT and entertainment industries, was founded in August 1997, to assume and extend the work of the DVD Consortium, the ten-company organization that initially developed the DVD format. When it started its work in developing the DVD format and promoting its widespread dissemination, the DVD Forum could count 86 members. Today, it has about 220 member companies, drawn from all over the world. The launch of DVD was one of the most successful consumer product launches in history. An immediate hit with consumers around the world, DVD brought new and exciting capabilities to home entertainment, computing and gaming, and created an immense global market: 2006 demand for DVD players and recorders stood at over 110 million units, and reached about 290 million units for DVD drives. In the same year, 1.7 billion DVD movie discs were shipped in the North America, while shipments of recordable discs climbed to 5.1 billion discs globally. This extraordinary success rests on the concerted efforts and long-term support of the DVD Forum, the Forum says. The Forum says that it assured the versatility and wide-ranging applicability of DVD by defining key specifications that met diverse needs, including those for DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-Audio, DVD-RW, and DVD-Video Recording. According to the DVD Forum, the Forum continues to define the future for DVD, and is now promoting development of HD DVD, the next generation DVD format -- based on blue laser -- and working on the development of an integrated networking environment -- extending DVD formats to adapt to the expanding online world. The DVD Forum will continue to benefit consumers - and promote the growth and vitality of the consumer electronics, IT and entertainment industries - the Forum states, by contributing to the usefulness and versatility of DVD technologies and adding new functions, including downloading to DVD format recordable discs.
The legitimate DVD market in China will grow fourfold in four years, according to forecasts from U.K. research house Screen Digest. But the growth could be faster still were the market not dominated by pirated goods, the report adds. Screen Digest's "Cinema and Home Entertainment in China" report says 70 million discs, worth $115 million, were sold legally in China in 2006. The declining market for low-tech VCDs was worth a further $50 million. Company forecasts the market could grow to $500 million by the end of 2010. It points to a growing group of wealthy urbanites who are rapidly buying home entertainment systems. That group could number 143 million by 2010. At that stage, China would account for a quarter of the world's DVD-equipped homes. With an estimated 2 billion pirated discs sold each year, the black market dwarfs the legitimate sector. Screen Digest says removal of restrictions on the legitimate market would allow it to flourish.
DVD sales in Germany broke through the 100 million barrier for the first time in 2006 but eroding prices meant revenues actually fell last year by 4%, prompting complaints against distributors for their dumping prices and sounding the alarm that there will be a further deterioration in 2007. The GfK market research institute reported that turnover fell to Euros 1.73 billion ($2.28 billion) in 2006 from $2.37 billion in 2005 even though unit sales rose to 101 million last year from 98.7 million in 2005. Home vid rentals fell once again in 2006, hurt in part by the soccer World Cup tournament in Germany as well as a long, hot summer that dampened demand. Vid rentals fell 11% last year to $374 million on 112 million rentals. On the bright side, the home entertainment sector had overall revenues of $2.09 billion in 2006, an amount almost double the $1.07 billion collected at the cinema box office.
Young actors have lent a helping hand to the fight against anti-social behaviour amongst young people in an English town. Working with Blyth Valley Housing's anti-social behaviour unit and the emergency services, drama students produced a DVD entitled Your Future, You Choose. The interactive DVD covers four areas - underage drinking and joyriding, graffiti and criminal damage, bullying, and fighting, and highlights the potentially fatal consequences of anti-social behaviour. Students wrote the scripts themselves, and appear as actors in the hard-hitting DVD which will be shown to pupils in schools in the local area. Portsmouth News [UK]: DVD Pirate Arrested A computer whizz has admitted making and selling thousands of pounds worth of counterfeit copies of films, games and software from his home. The man pleaded guilty to 13 counts of using trademarks without consent, and to making copies of DVDs and computer software, including PC software and X-Box video games. Police seized 2,581 DVDs of films, software and X-Box games, all of which were counterfeit. end
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