The festival features more than 60 artists performing over 31 consecutive nights in the UK’s best intimate venue. Each show is recorded for release on iTunes.

Officially the world’s largest indoor Festival, the line up includes 2010’s most exciting pop, metal, dance, jazz and opera stars including Scissor Sisters, Faithless, Ozzy Osbourne, Biffy Clyro, Paloma Faith and Rolando Villazon.

The iTunes Festival App allows fans to win tickets, watch the concerts streamed live and view photos and backstage info. Live EPs featuring highlights of each gig.

Programmes featuring festival highlights are being broadcast worldwide in locations as diverse as Thailand and Brazil.  re:fine are managing all of the deliverables for these broadcasts, including HD masters and the digital delivery of MPEG2 files.

These films, made by enterprising men and women at the forefront of science and nature filmmaking, developed groundbreaking techniques of time-lapse, microscopic and underwater cinematography. Paving the way for the natural history programmes that we know and love today, these Secrets grant us an entertaining, absorbing, and very special glimpse into the mysteries of the natural world.

The DVD9 features 19 individual programmes as well as a fully illustrated booklet featuring newly commissioned essays by leading researchers and scholars with film notes, photographs and illustrations.

It was a beautiful project to work on and our Sarah and Anita were proud to be credited in the booklet for their hard work!  The DVDs are available for sale on the BFI website.

Newcastle is a coming-of-age movie about a group of mates united by their love of surfing, set against the backdrop of the industrial town of Newcastle in Australia’s New South Wales.

This perfect summer film is beautifully shot in HD and has received excellent reviews for the surfing sequences, which include incredible underwater footage as well as shots of the endless Australian beaches.

The special features on the disc include an Director’s audio commentary with Director Dan Castle, director of photography Richard Michalak, sound designer Andrew Plain, and composer Michael Yezerski.  There is also a ‘making of’ featurette, a trailer and a picture gallery.  The film has subtitles in both  English and German.

Find the review on Blu-ray.com here

The series, produced by Videotext Productions, is now in its eighteenth year and enjoys an extremely loyal following.   The show has had many companion shows also being stored at re:fine,  including Time Team Extra, History Hunters and Time Team Digs.  The series also features special episodes, documentaries on history and archaeology and live episodes.

As well as storing the masters we service dubbing requirements.

Vanguard have a solid reputation as a leading release studio of independent films in the US.  To date they have released over 600 films on DVD and 500 films to digital platforms.  They are committed to supporting new talent in acting and directing and giving talented newcomers the opportunity to break into the industry.

As well as sorting the 45 films and accompanying metadata, re:fine will securely deliver the films to UK platforms such as Lovefilm and Blinkbox.

The organisation, founded in 2000, had an annual budget of £15m to invest in British films and employed 75 people.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he wanted to establish a “direct and less bureaucratic relationship with the British Film Institute”.

UK Film Council chairman Tim Bevan called it “a bad decision”.

He said the announcement was “imposed without any consultation or evaluation”.

“People will rightly look back on today’s announcement and say it was a big mistake, driven by short-term thinking and political expediency,” he said.

The DCMS said film funding would continue but would be distributed through other bodies.

Current lottery funding for film is £26 million per year. This is expected to increase to £32 million after 2012.

Direct government funding, currently about £25m a year, is being considered as part of the ongoing spending review.

In a statement, the DCMS said it was “clear that culture and creative industries will not be singled out as a soft target, and that the government will champion the value they bring”.

read more here

BBC execs will be relieved the apps have been okayed since they have already been produced and are ready to go. However, they will be angry over the Trust’s timing, which has meant them not being able to launch the apps in time for the FIFA World Cup.

The BBC had planned to roll out its iPhone sports app in time for the tournament, which kicked off on June 11, before the Trust called a halt to the launch in March, following criticism from external parties that the BBC was exceeding its remit.

The Trust’s ruling today comes weeks after the tournament has finished, missing a crucial window the Corporation would have had to get the app in front of thousands of football-hungry viewers.

The Trust’s assessment looked at the BBC’s app plans in four areas: the potential impact of the proposed apps, the financial implications, whether apps would involve the BBC in a new area of untested activity, and the duration of the proposed apps. The conclusion was that a public value test was unnecessary.

BBC Trustee Diane Coyle, who led the review, said: “The apps market is rapidly taking off as more people choose to get their news, sport and other online content while they’re on the move.

read more here

Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal , News Corp and Disney-ABC, has been seeking to expand internationally for some time and came close to tying up an agreement with UK broadcaster ITV earlier this year. The deal broke down when ITV decided it wanted to work on its catch-up TV services alone.

Last week, Hulu, which carries programmes such as Glee and Family Guy, launched Hulu Plus, a premium content subscription service that offers back episodes of series such as Arrested Development and Family Guy for US$9.99 month.

It is being rolled out on the iPad, iPhone and third-generation iPod Touch, with carriage on Samsung connected TVs and Blu-Ray players. Hulu is also aiming to put the service on games consoles such as the Xbox and PlayStation 3.

Jason Kilar, the JV’s CEO, told London’s Financial Times he was confident Hulu Plus could be launched internationally, adding: “We won’t be satisfied until this is a global sevice.” Japan and the UK are understood to be priorities.

Kilar added that Hulu was not in competition with US cablenets that offer premium content, such as HBO. “It is inaccurate to consider Hulu as a substitute for cable or pay-TV services,” he said. “We want to make sure that our focus is on serving an unmet need with broadcast content.”

Take-up of Hulu Plus has been good, attracting “thousands” of subscribers, according to reports in the US. But customers have complained about paying for a service that still contains pre-roll advertising and commercial breaks.

read more at c21 Here

UltraViolet to Give Consumers Greater Choice and Freedom to Purchase, Manage and Watch Digital Movies, TV Shows and Other Entertainment

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem LLC (DECE LLC), a cross-industry consortium dedicated to driving a new, open market for digital content distribution, today announced its consumer brand – UltraViolet™ – and logo (www.uvvu.com). UltraViolet represents a new way for consumers to have greater choice, confidence and freedom in how, when and where they enjoy digital movies, TV shows and other entertainment. In addition, the consortium announced three additional new members bringing the total to nearly 60 member companies.

“We believe that UltraViolet will provide consumers with an easy-to-use way to buy and watch digital entertainment across multiple devices”

Complementing the physical DVD and Blu-ray home entertainment markets, UltraViolet will allow consumers to watch their digital entertainment across multiple platforms, such as connected TVs, PCs, game consoles, smartphones and tablet PCs, in an easy, consistent way. Since all UltraViolet offerings will work together, consumers will be able to select which products and devices they prefer from a spectrum of familiar companies – ranging from major studios to consumer electronics companies to cable, web and other service providers. In addition, the UltraViolet name and logo will help identify entertainment products and services designed to work together seamlessly.

“The introduction of the UltraViolet brand is another important step towards the consumer launch of UltraViolet products and services,” said Mitch Singer, DECE president and CTO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Our goal is to firmly establish UltraViolet as the symbol for digital entertainment – one that gives consumers the freedom of access wherever they are, the confidence of knowing how it will work and the broadest choice of content, stores and devices.”

The UltraViolet experience will be powered by a cloud-based UltraViolet Account, which will include a Digital Rights Locker and account management functionality. Consumers will be able to create an UltraViolet Account, free of charge, via one of the many participating UltraViolet service providers or through the UltraViolet website. Once created, this Account will allow consumers to easily access and manage all of their UltraViolet entertainment, regardless of where it was purchased.

Technical specifications and licensing details for companies who wish to offer UltraViolet content, services and devices, are expected this year.

DECE also announced the addition of LG Electronics, LOVEFiLM and Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. to the consortium. These companies join DECE’s already strong group which include world leaders across a wide range of industries.

Contribution from the stadia to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) was performed as separate left eye and right eye streams using JPEG2000 compression. At the IBC, Sensio equipment converted two HD SDI signals into one HD SDI side-by-side (Frame Compatible) output and this was encoded with an Ericsson E5780 HD encoder in MPEG-2 at 40Mbps in 27MHz of bandwidth using DVB-S2 modulation, uplinked via Intelsat to London, with fibre back-up into London and Frankfurt. From London the signals were redistributed worldwide.

Because some cinema projectors could only work with 720p HD (Frame Compatible 3DTV) GlobeCast also decoded the MPEG-2 stream in London to convert the content into this HD format, taking care of some specific audio configurations as well. For the rest of the market the signal was delivered as 1080i50 HD. Broadcast/Pay TV customers for the GlobeCast 3D contribution feeds included ESPN in the US, Sky PerfecTV in Japan, CCTV in China, SBS in Australia, TF1 in France and Sogecable in Spain.

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