Press

While store groups across Europe are bracing themselves for tough trading conditions, shopping over the television is forecast to boom over the next few years, according to a report published on Thursday.

Media analysts Screen Digest and Goldmedia forecast that revenues from television shopping would jump by 54 percent to 6.4 billion euros ($8.1 billion) by 2012, fuelled by growth in digital and Internet TV.

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By Bernhard Warner

The blessedly short-lived format war pitting Blu-ray against HD-DVD turned on a host of big assumptions, chief among them the promise to Hollywood that Blu-ray discs are more resistant to rip-and-burn piracy. A recent piece of research declares that logic is flat wrong.

According to the UK-based media consultancy Screen Digest, Blu-ray disc "rips" are appearing on bit-torrent file-sharing networks with greater frequency, sometimes days after the Hollywood studios put the titles on the market. That's what happened to Paramount's Iron Man, which was made available on Blu-ray in late September and days later popped up on Pirate Bay. Sure enough, a quick search by me of other popular file-sharing sites reveals more than 20 Blu-ray titles including an 8GB version of What Happens in Vegas, a 5.5GB version of Ratatouille and a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix weighing in at 14GB.

According to analysts at Screen Digest, the watered down pirated versions typically run at a 720p resolution (the number refers to the horizontal lines of resolution), considerably inferior to the 1080p image resolution of Blu-ray discs. At that level of compression – 720p – the viewer is getting a good picture quality, but the resolution is still just two-thirds as sharp as the original high-definition version. Given that the primary point of Blu-ray is its unrivalled picture quality, that seems like a big sacrifice.

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By Antony Bruno

As Universal Music Group continues to ponder launching a Hulu-like site for music videos, Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel released a prediction that could add momentum to the idea.

According to a Financial Times article, Amel says the Hulu service -- a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal -- will catch YouTube next year in advertising revenue

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