Monday, May 10, 2010

Despite global declines, DVD and Blu-ray sales were either flat or even increased in 2009, with the Blu-ray sales to be expected to further increase in 2010.

These were among the key findings of a new report released by Media Control GfK, the world's largest provider of international media & entertainment performance metrics.

"Despite global declines in DVD sales, the local economies of the international markets were not all down in 2009," said Brad Hackley, President of Media Control GfK USA.

Media Control GfK's '2009 Year End Summary and 2010 Home Video Forecast Report' notes that 33% of the international territories experienced either positive or flat DVD & Blu-ray annual revenue performance in 2009. Germany and Sweden led all territories, followed by Switzerland and Australia. However, other leading markets, the U.K. and Japan, mirrored the U.S. with double-digit sales declines from the prior year.

Other notable findings from the report estimate the number of Blu-ray units sold through to consumers is expected to increase this year on average nearly 70% across the key international markets.

Read the entire briefing about Blu-ray Disc Sales To Increase in 2010

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Strong Blu-ray Disc sales continued during the first quarter of 2010, topping 151.4 million Euros, according to the latest report issued by the Digital Entertainment Group Europe (DEGE).

Combined with DVD sales, the home entertainment market saw an increase of 2.3 percent in sales, a total of 1.5 Billion Euros and a unit increase of 3.8 percent, DEGE said. In 2009, sales of Blu-ray Discs grew 109 percent and the sales figures for Q1 2010 - more than 8.4 million discs sold between January and March 2010 - suggest Blu-ray Disc sales will continue to match this level in 2010.

The sales results are derived from official European market performance figures and include Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and UK.

DVD disc sales increased 0.9 percent during the first quarter of the year, and saw a mild 1.7 percent decrease in value. However, the uprising in Blu-ray Disc sales offset this decline, further evidence of the increasing popularity and appeal of the Blu-ray Disc format.

"Blu-ray has continued to ride the wave of success at the start of 2010 and it is promising to see consumers respond well to the format," said Yves Caillaud, Senior Vice President (EMEA) of Warner Home Video and Digital Distribution and Chairman of the DEGE. "With the release of some of most popular films in cinematic history in the coming months, we expect to see Blu-ray sales continue to do well through the year. The industry is providing consumers with the most innovative and enjoyable home entertainment experiences, and we expect sales to increase as the penetration of HDTVs continues to accelerate."

Read the entire briefing about Blu-ray Disc Drives Return to Growth

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

NVIDIA is promoting its NVIDIA 3D Vision technology that brings support for 3D Blu-ray playback on the PC with the release of the first beta graphics driver. The company today announced the first driver release from the new Release 256 family of drivers. Version 257.15 beta for GeForce and ION GPUs is already available for download, while a WHQL-certified version is planned for early June.

This driver release comes just six weeks after the GTX 400 launch driver. Nvidia says that it has already achieved some performance optimizations. This driver is also available for notebook PCs, including those with NVIDIA Optimus technology.

3D movies are making their way to Blu-ray disc thanks to NVIDIA 3D Vision technology. NVIDIA is the first to enable Blu-ray 3D acceleration for the PC. With this release, Nvidia is offering new settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel for 3-way SLI customers that enable 48x SLI Antialiasing (96x for 3-way GTX 400 series PCs). The company also added a new higher quality ambient occlusion setting in the NVIDIA Control Panel for more realistic scene shading.

For all those who have more than one NVIDIA GPU in their PC, Nvidia is offering detailed controls for them. Release 256 adds a new SLI and PhysX configuration page that not only makes setup easy but also gives users more control over how their GPUs are configured. For example, users will be able to to pair two GPUs in SLI mode and dedicate the third to PhysX, or activate all three of their displays and then optimize for highest performance in that configuration. The new page even has real-time visual feedback. And, finally, for those that want to select which GPU their CUDA applications run on, the Manage 3D Settings page now has a ‘CUDA GPUs’ option to enable this.

Nvidia also said that its 3D Vision Surround technology will be ready in the second release that is targeted for the end of June.

Read the entire briefing about Latest Nvidia Graphics Drivers Suppport Blu-ray 3D