Despite declining industry sales and rentals of packaged entertainment content, the Redbox kiosk rentals business remains "very large and compelling" and boasts "one of the strongest brands in home entertainment, providing new movie releases and games to millions of consumers,” Erik Prusch, CEO of Redbox parent Outerwall, said on a Thursday earnings call. “We continue to believe that this will be the case for many years to come,” Prusch said.
Amazon’s Alexa service added event-tracking functionality, the Echo weekly update said Friday. Echo users can manage events, occasions and appointments with Google Calendar using Alexa voice control once they’ve set up the feature in the Alexa app settings. Users can add events and request information about recorded events, it said.
In one of a handful of NAB announcements, DTS said Monday it’s teaming with LiveTV and video-on-demand content service company Nowtilus on surround-sound targeted toward pay-TV operators and broadcasters. The offering delivers multichannel surround sound to mobile and connected over-the-top devices that include DTS Headphone:X technology using components from Unified Streaming and castLabs’ mobile player SDK (software development kit), DTS said. The companies are offering broadcasters and content providers a turnkey service for delivering digital video content and multichannel surround sound experiences to customers, said Patrick Knippel, Nowtilus managing director-finance and sales. Elsewhere, DTS gave an HD Radio status report since its buy of iBiquity last fall. HD Radio technology was built into roughly 37 percent of cars sold in the U.S. last year and is available on 36 brands and more than 200 models, DTS said, while more than 2,300 radio stations have upgraded to HD Radio. New car models due out this year with HD Radio receivers: Alfa Romeo Giulia, Audi R8 Spyder, Hyundai Ioniq, Kia Niro, Lexus LC, Toyota 86 and Toyota Mirai. The 2016 Subaru Legacy and 2016 Toyota Camry are on-site at NAB for real-world demos, said DTS, which is also showcasing FM+ technology, it said. DTS also said at NAB that DTS-supported content encoding will be available next month through Microsoft Azure's Media Encoder Premium for OTT streaming services. Media Encoder Premium gives OTT services the ability to encode and package DTS-enabled content “with minimal investment and engineering lift," said Ronny Katz, vice president-streaming solutions and business development, DTS.
Seagate introduced an 8 GB hard drive, the first USB-powered desktop hard drive, the company said Wednesday. Seagate is positioning the Innov8 ($349) as a solution for CE products that require an external power supply in spaces where power outlets are at a premium. The hard drive includes Seagate’s Ignition Boost Technology, which along with USB 3.1 connectivity, allows the hard drive to operate off a computer’s power without a dedicated power source or adapter, said the company. Innov8 comes with Seagate backup software and includes 200 GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage, Seagate said.
AT&T bowed a "rugged" mobile Wi-Fi hot spot Monday, due in stores Friday for $49 with a two-year contract. The Unite Explore hot spot is dustproof, water- and shock-resistant, AT&T said, and can share a 4G LTE connection with up to 15 mobile devices. Features include guest Wi-Fi with timer, parental controls, 22-hour battery life, touch screen and a battery-boost function for charging a smartphone, it said.
Though RIAA said streaming was the largest component of recorded music revenue (see 1603220061) for the first time in 2015, 2015 also was a banner year, in terms of percentage growth, for vinyl LPs, RIAA said in a Tuesday report. The industry shipped 16.9 million vinyl LPs in 2015, a 28.3 percent rise from 2014, RIAA said. The industry shipped $416.2 million worth of vinyl LPs, a 32.2 percent jump from 2014, it said. The industry shipped more than seven times as many album-length CDs as it did LPs last year, but CD unit and dollar shipments declined 13.9 percent and 17 percent, respectively, it said. Total physical unit and dollar shipments fell 10.8 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively, it said.
Disney, Fox and Lionsgate will release four live-action and animated feature films for Dolby Cinema worldwide over the next few months, Dolby said Friday. Dolby Cinema uses the Dolby Vision projection system with high dynamic range and enhanced color and contrast ratio, and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. A Dolby spokesman said it’s up to the studios to decide whether they’ll adapt the technologies to a disc-based video format. The Dolby Cinema titles are Fox's Deadpool, which opened in theaters Friday; Disney’s Zootopia, slated for March 4; Lionsgate’s The Divergent Series: Allegiant, set for March 18; and Lionsgate's Now You See Me 2, scheduled for June 10, it said.
Universal will release Crimson Peak in DTS:X on Blu-ray Feb. 9, said DTS in an email Friday. It joins American Ultra and Ex Machina on the DTS:X release lists. The Last Witch Hunter with DTS:X will be available in Full HD Tuesday, and the Ultra HD version will release March 1, said DTS. At competitor Dolby, a spokesman told us if a title is in DTS:X, it’s likely “it will not be a Dolby Atmos title.” To date, 34 Dolby Atmos titles have been released and 10 announced titles are awaiting Blu-ray release. Thirteen Atmos titles are available on Vudu, with In the Heart of the Sea slated for availability Feb. 23.
AACS LA, the license administrator for Blu-ray’s Advanced Access Content System security platform, appointed advisory services firm Farncombe as its first “authorized robustness consultant” (ARC) for Ultra HD Blu-ray’s AACS2 content protection system, said Farncombe’s parent Cartesian in a Tuesday announcement. AACS2, which recently became available for licensing, “includes enhancements to support the premium quality of Ultra HD Blu-ray content,” AACS LA said in a platform summary. Licensing AACS2 requires product certification testing by an “authorized certification entity,” plus a two-step “robustness consultation” with an ARC, AACS LA said. The ARC “is a new role in the Blu-ray ecosystem with responsibility for assessing security robustness of Ultra HD Blu-ray devices,” Cartesian said. That role is “is very similar” to Cartesian’s “existing security auditing process and builds on our recent work adapting our existing audits to include Ultra HD security requirements,” it said.
Tesco is expanding trial sales of vinyl albums for the holiday selling season, following its successful September test sales of the new triple-LP vinyl album by British rock group Iron Maiden (see 1508310007), the U.K. supermarket chain said in a Friday announcement. Tesco will expand its vinyl-LP range to 20 titles, including the new Coldplay release, A Head Full of Dreams and “all-time classics” like Sticky Fingers from the Rolling Stones, it said. “The move is significant as in the last few years the vinyl album revival has been gaining momentum, year on year with sales up by more than 50 per cent in 2014,” the chain said, citing British Phonographic Industry data. Tesco’s trial of Iron Maiden’s triple-LP vinyl album “was a real success with all our stock selling out and this really proved to us just how popular the vinyl album format is again with music fans,” the chain said. “Vinyl is definitely coming back with demand growing stronger year by year and we think there will be a big demand in the UK this Christmas as music fans look for trendy gifting options.” Vinyl albums “have bucked the downward sales trend” in physical music sales, it said, citing BPI 2014 data that music CD sales fell 6.5 percent and music downloads declined by nearly 9 percent. Besides vinyl LPs, streaming, which grew by 78 percent last year from a year earlier, is the “only other music format” experiencing sales growth in the U.K., Tesco said. To support the vinyl sales trend, Tesco began selling turntables last Christmas and “demand has been so strong that it now stocks 12 different models,” ranging in price from 40 to 140 pounds ($60 to $212), the chain said.