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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated August 19, 2007 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
1 -
Premonition MGM/Tri-Star
Federal agents seized nearly 500,000 CDs and 6,135 stampers capable of producing more than 300 million disks of pirated and counterfeit software. Ye Teng Wen, also known as Michael Wen, 31, and Hao He, who is sometimes called Kevin He, 32, both of Union City, Calif., were each sentenced to 37 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release, a $125,000 fine, and a $500 mandatory special assessment. On June 4, a third conspirator, Yaobin Zhai, also known as Ben Zhai, 34, of Fremont, Calif., received the same sentence but also was ordered to pay $6.9 million in restitution. The arrests came as part of an undercover operation -- called Operation Remaster -- run by the FBI and the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) Task Force. The government estimated that that amount of equipment could reproduce more than 300 million pirated CDs and DVDs.
Using educational videos and DVD’s to make your baby smart may actually do the opposite, according to a study. Researchers found the more babies watched those programs the less they actually knew. University of Washington researchers asked a thousand parents: What does your baby watch on TV? Shows like Sesame Street and even adult programming seemed to have no impact. However kids under a year and a half, who watched educational DVDs knew ten percent fewer words than those who did not. Fred Zimmerman of the University of Washington says, "That might possibly undo the effects of the reading and stuff you're doing right." Dr. Dimitri Christakis, University of Washington says, "Even a video of a person, of a parent, talking to their child, cannot adequately replace that same parent in the room interacting live with that baby."
A recent report published by Global Industry Analysts says growth in the DVD players market is expected to stem from Asia-Pacific, which has the potential to rise by 600,000 units between 2007 to 2010. Turbo-charging global growth is the DVD recorders market, which is expected to grow by 38.6% over the analysis period of 2001 through 2010.
Now that DVD sales have flattened, providers are offering more premium-priced gift sets of popular movies or TV shows, packaged in fancy boxes. "Collector's sets are a half-billion dollar market, with revenue growing at a nearly double-digit pace," said one video executive. "Core fans of popular franchises will buy the sets if they deliver on value." Warner research shows that while DVD sales overall are in a slight decline, sales of the high-end gift sets are up 7% for the year so far and expected to climb further because 72% of sales occur in the second half. Lately the trend has accelerated, with handsomely boxed complete series sets of such popular TV series as "Friends," "M*A*S*H" and "The West Wing," as well as elegant movie gift sets like the complete collection of "Superman" movies.
Sniffer dogs have helped shut down a factory in Malaysia that was producing pirated films, according to the Motion Picture Association (MPA) trade body. About 18,000 discs were seized from the premises near Kuala Lumpur. Lucky and Flo - the first dogs trained to sniff out counterfeit discs - were involved in the operation, which led to the detention of four men. Since March, 26 arrests have been made following raids involving the dogs. In the last six months, more than 1.6 million discs have been recovered by Malaysian authorities during operations involving the Labradors. end
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