By Andrew Shapiro

One of the things both our industrial clients and our entertainment clients have in common is an increase in the amount of content they need to send abroad. Establishing a foothold for your business in an international market or making sure your latest nature special gains as much revenue as possible form the European market are both excellent reasons to consider producing replication runs for overseas consumers. The only down side, in fact, is the confusing array of standards and compatibility issues that can arise when leaving the USA. Lets take a look at the major considerations in some depth: Read the full story

By Andrew Shapiro

In the past few weeks we’ve discussed DVD Video, Blue-Ray and CD or DVD-ROM. I realized recently how long it’s been since I have discussed, at length, the audio CD format with a client. I’m also willing to bet it’s been some time since you have actually considered the audio CD and what its advantages and disadvantages are, or at the very least, what else it can do besides play audio. Read the full story

By Andrew Shapiro

DVD, CD-Rom, Audio CD, even web-based delivery; we’ve never had so many options to deliver high quality audio – visual information to our clients and consumers. It can sometimes be a bewildering process to choose between formats. In other cases people begin the conceptualization of a project only to realize, halfway through, that the medium they had in mind does not compliment the requirements of the project at hand. Read the full story

By Andrew Shapiro

The high definition format wars have been over for more than a year now and those of us in the production and replication industries can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Or can we? At the end of the last holiday shopping season Sony reported somewhat disappointing sales numbers for their now Read the full story

By Andrew Shapiro

Disc replication and packaging is often the last step in production process. Those of us who regularly work in replication are afforded a unique perspective on the origin and maturity of consumer and industrial video and audio products. Like a Monday morning quarterback we can Read the full story

Videomaker Magazine chose iDEA MEDIA to manufacture their newest Tips & Tricks DVD line featuring Outdoor Videography, Field Audio, Lighting and Special Effects. Each DVD is loaded with tips, tricks, demonstrations and step-by-step examples to help you master these various elements of video production. Read the full story

Flash memory storage is accelerating

In both the consumer and professional fields the demand for storage space continues to skyrocket, with the three key competing formats – removable optical, flash memory, and hard disk – battling it out on an ever-expanding landscape that continues to demand larger and larger storage capacities.

In the consumer arena, traditional optical media solutions such as CD and standard definition DVD are Read the full story

SanDisk introduces music on a flash card for portable players Read the full story

Thoughts from the Austin Game Developers Conference

With the phenomenal growth of the video gaming market over the last few years, many of us have turned our attention to this area of the business looking for new opportunities. To that end, and in the interests of educating myself a little more about the gaming industry, I recently attended the Austin Game Developers Conference, the smaller of two events held every year that bring together game developers, publishers and of course the vendors who supply the tools of the trade – because somebody has to pick up the tab for all those wonderful Tex-Mex meals. Read the full story

Can home entertainment save the holiday season?

These are challenging times, not just for the home entertainment industry, but for everyone. With the mortgage meltdown, skyrocketing unemployment, and the Dow and unpredictable roller-coaster, it’s beginning to look more and more as though we are headed for a recession – if we’re not already in one. Read the full story

As with DVD, enabling independent producers can help drive the growth of the BD market.

Technology providers for the entertainment industry often refer to market “tiers” – Tier 1 is typically Hollywood; Tier 2 is outside Hollywood. Tier 1 is smaller, but more influential. To be successful, you need to garner at least one Tier 1 customer, because then you can attract Tier 2 customers. If you’re lucky, then you make it to the broader market of Tier 3: the pro-sumers, amateurs and wannabees. Or so the theory goes. Read the full story

There’s a lot of money to be made in “free” music…

We know all about the Long Tail, but what about the Short Nose? The front end, whether it belongs to a car or a consumer, is the place where the first impact generally takes place, where the nature of the experience is determined. Western content companies have had mixed results with their encounters with the digital front end. Their obsession with monitoring and monetizing every pixel and audio sample has led to a misplacement of priorities that has hobbled the evolution of their business models into fully digital economics. Read the full story

At the height of the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray war, SCREEN Mag decided to sit down with Erik Gershfeld, manager of Chicago’s iDEA Media, a company that specializes in CD and DVD manufacturing and replication. iDEA Media has been in business for several years now and recently moved into a larger facility. Gershfeld talks about the changes within his company and his thoughts on the high-definition battle. Read the full story

DVD duplication services are getting more popular nowadays because newer technologies are coming up with newer innovations. But before you start DVD duplication services, you must understand the basics of it. DVD duplication services help you to transfer pictures to a disk, or movies from one disc to another. However, it is not possible to duplicate DVDs that already has copyright protection on it. In case you try to do it, you may face serious penalties. Read the full story

At this hour, when the entire world is grasped into the clasp of global warming, Eco-Friendly living is a requirement for all. Eco-Friendly packaging is very common today. Basically, Eco-Friendly means to manufacture biodegradable or recyclable product. Read the full story