DVDVideoSoft.com launched a free MP4 video converter desktop app for Windows that converts any video for playback on smartphones, tablets and other personal devices, it said Friday: It claims to support at least two dozen of the most popular video formats and does its conversions without quality loss.
IMAX should be viewed through a lens of providing “enabling technology for premium entertainment experiences” vs. the spotlight of week-to-week box office volatility, wrote Dougherty & Co. analyst Steven Frankel in a Monday investor note. IMAX shares hit a 52-week low Monday, dropping 4.2 percent to $17.21 amid overall market negative reaction to coronavirus fears. IMAX operated 639 theaters in Greater China at the end of 2018, with 272 more in backlog for installation by 2022. The region was 31 percent of the entertainment company’s revenue that year, said the 2019 annual report. Thursday, IMAX said it will postpone release of titles scheduled to open for the Chinese New Year amid travel restrictions by the Chinese government. Frankel highlighted the company’s widening portfolio of IMAX Enhanced licensing partners as a growth segment for the company. Dougherty lowered IMAX's Q4 reporting estimate to $27 from $30 but maintained a buy rating. Dolby, meanwhile, opened the 2,000th screen with Dolby Atmos in China in September, with China providing 17 percent of revenue. Dolby shares closed down 0.6 percent Monday at $68.84
Though the $199 Amazon Echo Studio is the only smart speaker to support Dolby Atmos Music, consumers can hear music recorded in the immersive audio format through a growing number of Atmos-enabled sound bars and smartphones, Dougherty & Co. analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Thursday. The analyst is eyeing a “tipping point in content that should drive Atmos adoption” beyond the Amazon and Tidal’s HD tiers. The immersive audio music format continues to attract “high profile artists,” said Frankel, citing Post Malone, Lizzo, Coldplay, Alicia Keys and Halsey. A growing number of reasonably priced sound bars with Dolby Atmos, plus the latest iPhones, can play back Atmos Music content, he noted. At CES, TV makers expanded deployment of Atmos and Vision, and Dolby launched Vision IQ, an HDR enhancement technology said to adjust screen brightness to changing room light conditions (see 2001080037), with LG and Panasonic as early adopters. “We walked away from CES with the sense that increasingly Dolby's premium experiences are becoming available on mainstream devices and not just for audio and videophiles,” Frankel said, maintaining a "buy" rating on the stock.
Denon and TCL will be the first companies to launch Roku TV Ready products, said the streaming content platform provider Monday in a CES announcement. Products under the Roku TV Ready program will display a logo on marketing materials identifying that they're certified to work with Roku TVs with “smooth setup, easy on-screen access to sound settings and volume control” via a single remote, Roku said. Denon product users will be able to access AV receiver features via a Roku remote, and other select Sound United brands will feature Roku TV Ready products this year, too, it said. Roku announced Element, Hitachi, InFocus, JVC are among the 15 TV brands slated to launch Roku TV models in Canada, Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K. this year. InFocus, Polaroid and Walmart’s Atvio brand will bring Roku TV to Mexico, joining Westinghouse. TCL and Hisense will expand their Roku TV offerings to North America later this year, it said. Other Roku TV brands for 2020 are Magnavox, onn, Philips, Polaroid, RCA and Sanyo.
India-based over-the-top video platform Eros Now said it will support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos immersive audio on select content. The platform will stream several films in Dolby Atmos at launch; original series combining both technologies will be available soon, it said Monday.
Former Vice President Joe Biden took heat from journalists and social media for his 250-word answer to a question about segregation during Thursday’s Democratic debate that included this advice for how low-income parents can build a better home for their school-age kids: “Make sure you have the record player on at night.” Though record players “still have cachet among the hipster set, they faded from most American households decades ago," wrote Marisa Fernandez on Axios.com, typifying other reactions. “It's one of those moments that can long outlive an election.” Debate-watchers will argue whether Biden’s record-player remark did him political harm as evidence of his difficulty connecting with youthful voters. But there's no denying the rebirth in component turntables and vinyl LPs, though the hardware numbers are expected to experience modest declines for 2019. CTA forecasts the industry will ship 957,000 turntables in the U.S. this year worth about $138 million in revenue, which would be down 4 percent in units, 3 percent in dollars, from 2018, emailed spokesperson Danielle Cassagnol Friday. RIAA doesn’t provide shipment forecasts, but says 16.7 million vinyl LPs worth $419.2 million were sold in the U.S. in 2018, up 7.2 percent from a year earlier in units, 7.9 percent in dollars. That compared with a 40.7 percent unit decline and 33.9 percent revenue decline in CDs. Physical format sales paled in comparison with streamed-music revenue, which climbed 30 percent in 2018 to $7.4 billion, said RIAA.
The Imax Enhanced ecosystem, including DTS sound, added Sony and TCL TVs outside of the U.S. market and secured content distribution agreements with FandangoNow and Rakuten TV, it said Thursday. Imax Enhanced certified select Sony Bravia TVs in “targeted European territories” and TCL’s X10 TV in China, it said. Paramount Pictures said its first Imax Enhanced title is Bumblebee, to be followed by Crawl, Pet Sematary (2019) and Rocketman. Sony Pictures will release The Angry Birds Movie 2 on Ultra HD Blu-ray, they said. FandangoNow is expected to begin streaming Imax Enhanced content in the U.S. this month, and Rakuten TV will have increased content ready for streaming to European markets in “coming months,” said Imax and DTS. Existing Imax Enhanced hardware partners are Arcam, AudioControl, Denon, Elite, Integra, Lexicon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer and Trinnov.
An update to the WinX HD Video Converter software program can reduce the size of 4K UHD videos by 90 percent, said developer Digiarty Friday. The update includes an optimized compression kernel and hardware acceleration technology. A one-hour, 30-frame-per-second 4K GoPro file uses about 26 GB, and an iPhone about 23 GB to shoot an hour of 4K HEVC video at 60 fps, it said, noting large 4K video files can mean slow upload speeds and choppy playback errors. The kernel update brings a high level of 4K video compression performance -- up to 90 percent file size reduction and six times faster speed -- without compromising quality, it said. A free version of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe for Windows 10- and earlier systems is available at the company website, it said.
Trinnov Audio will demonstrate DTS:X Pro at CEDIA Expo Sept. 12-14, the North American debut of the professional version of DTS immersive sound technology. DTS:X Pro supports up to 30.2 discrete speaker outputs with the ability to scale dynamically based on source material and output layout. Trinnov’s demo will use an 11.4.6-channel system based on Altitude32 and Altitude16 processors, it said. The Neural:XTM upmixer used in DTS:X Pro ensures channel-based content is distributed to connected speakers and audio objects are rendered to precise locations based on the user’s speaker layout. Current owners of Trinnov Altitude32 and Altitude16 processors will be able to upgrade to DTS:X Pro at no charge via a software download, said the company. Trinnov CEO Arnaud Laborie noted the company has been collaborating with DTS since 2014 and had the first public demo of DTS:X at CES 2015 with an Altitude32 processor.
Verance will add Project OAR support to its Aspect watermarking platform, said the company Wednesday. OAR, for Open Addressable Ready, is the Vizio-led consortium of media companies formed in the spring to develop open technical standards for addressable advertising on connected TVs (see 1903120071). Watermarking technologies like Aspect “are expected to factor into the accurate delivery and decisioning” of addressable TV advertising, said Verance. Aspect has been in “wide commercial trials” with broadcasters and TV makers since being designated ATSC 3.0's A/335 video watermark standard three years ago, said Verance. It’s working with broadcast equipment vendors to include OAR “watermark embedding capabilities” into products for implementation later this year, it said.