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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated July 17, 2008 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
1 -
The Bucket List [Warner]
The upcoming Beijing Olympics is boosting sales of products such as flat-panel televisions and Blu-ray DVD recorders. Volume electronics stores are reporting sharp increases in sales of flat-panel TVs this month and expect an even greater surge once workers get their summer bonuses.
Two of Australia's leading media organisations say they are confronting the growing presence of organised crime networks involved in sophisticated television, DVD and internet piracy, costing the local media hundreds of millions of dollars a year. "DVD and other piracy can now be more profitable than drug trafficking," AFACT's director of operations Neil Gane told The Australian. "That's why crime organisations are going into it." Mark Mulready, Foxtel's head of fraud, said intellectual property theft attracted organised crime "because they see it as high margin and low risk. What we're finding is, these groups are operating across borders and are becoming more sophisticated in how they distribute their pirated software and hardware". A 2005 study by LEK Consulting suggested $233 million a year was being lost by the local movie industry alone through piracy. Other analysts say the figure for the entire media is hundreds of millions of dollars more, given how the rapid spread of pirate technologies is affecting first-run content.
Studios are getting musical in their marketing for upcoming DVD releases. Upcoming DVDs from several studios will be released on DVD around the same time as their soundtracks on CD.
Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Tohaku University, Japan has claimed to develop 42 GB DVD. According to CrunchGear, this high capacity DVD was developed by using V-shaped as opposed to flat pits on the DVD? recording surface. This surface offers more space for data-storing. Researchers commented that this method also can be used with normal CDs. However researchers said that the method is not useful for Blu-ray drive, which hold 25 GB capacity in the single layer disc. However the disadvantage of the method is that, these 42 GB DVDs can not be used with normal DVD players. Normal DVD players can not even read the content stored in the 42 GB DVD.
Fox and Warner are releasing older titles. Last week Fox issued "The Carmen Miranda Collection," and Warner came out with several Frank Sinatra box sets last month ·all bringing many titles to DVD for the first time, and several that marked their debut on any home-video format. And every once in awhile, an independent label negotiates to pick up a studio film that has been neglected, as with the Leslie Caron musical "Fanny," a Warner Bros. film released last week by Image Entertainment, and the Barbara Stanwyck Western "The Furies," a Paramount Pictures production that the Criterion Collection also issued last week. Legend Films ·which up to now has been primarily involved in colorizing classic black-and-white pictures ·recently licensed more than 30 films from Paramount for DVD release. Half are out now and the rest arrive next month. None of these titles has been on DVD before, and some have never been on home video. The prints are uniformly excellent transfers (widescreen where applicable), although the only extras are chapters and trailers. Among the best are the Peter Sellers comedy-drama "The Optimists" (1973); the family comedy "Rhubarb" (1951), about a baseball team inherited by a cat; the John Sayles teen picture "Baby, It's You" (1983); Jackie Gleason's dramatic turn in "Papa's Delicate Condition" (1962); a pair of very good but largely forgotten Shirley MacLaine films, "Desperate Characters" and "The Possession of Joel Delaney"; and a pair of British horror pictures, "The Skull" (1965), with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and Hammer Films' "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" (1959). end
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