Frequency | Monthly |
---|---|
Founded | July 1979 [1] |
Company | Questex Media Group |
Country | United States |
Based in | Santa Ana, California |
Language | English |
Home Media Magazine was a trade publication that covered various aspects of the home entertainment industry, most notably home video distribution via VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and digital copy. [2] The magazine also covered news relating to consumer electronics, video games, home video distributors and various forms of digital distribution of movie and TV content. [3]
The magazine was founded in 1979 and was known as Video Store Magazine until January 2005, [4] when it became Home Media Retailing. [5] To further its consumer focus, the magazine dropped "Retailing" at the beginning of 2007. In 2014 the magazine's print edition was reduced to biweekly and in 2015, to monthly; at the same time, the magazine expanded its web presence through a daily e-newsletter and frequent "breaking news" alerts. HM also published frequent special issues, such as special reports on 4K Ultra HD, Vidity, and UltraViolet; rankings of the top women in home entertainment, key digital drivers, and leading disruptors; and, in 2011, a salute to executives in home entertainment under the age of 40. [6]
The magazine was based in Santa Ana, California, and was a subsidiary of the Questex Media Group.
In July 2006, HM launched a consumer magazine called Agent DVD, a semi-regular periodical focusing on home entertainment news. The first issue debuted at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con, and focused on titles and news that would appeal to convention-goers. The consumer magazine was later rebranded as Home Media Insider and offered only in digital form. Additionally, Home Media Magazine presented annual awards covering the best DVD and Blu-ray products. Questex ceased production of Home Media Magazine after the December 2017 issue. [7]
In January 2018, the core team responsible for producing the Home Media Magazine print and online properties returned with an independent operation named Media Play News that offers an expanded home entertainment focus from its predecessor, covering not just Blu-ray Disc and DVD but also transactional video-on-demand (both streaming and purchase) as well as subscription streaming. [8]
As of December 2022, Thomas K. Arnold sits as the publisher and editorial director of Media Play News, while Stephanie Prange is the editor-in-chief. [9]
The new publication publishes a monthly magazine in both print and digital versions and maintains a website, a daily newsletter, reviews, and breaking news alerts. [10]
Seemingly, the new publication acts both as a curator and an aggregator of content for the home entertainment industry, as it distributes its various forms of content using multiple channels—both digital and print. Currently, Media Plays News is used and cited by retailers, media outlets, [lower-alpha 1] technology reporters, and consumers in the home entertainment industry. [10]
Media Play News often uses major conventions, festivals, and other industry events [lower-alpha 2] as an additional channel to distribute its print publication. [9]
Since 2018, Media Play News has been publishing a curated list of the top forty influential business executives in the home entertainment industry. The list is titled "40 Under 40 in Home Entertainment". [13]
Media Plays News produces an annual awards contest titled the "Home Entertainment Media Play Awards". [14] The awards are all-embracing to the home entertainment industry, covering dozens of categories. [lower-alpha 3]
A home cinema, also called a home theater or theater room, is a home entertainment audio-visual system that seeks to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer electronics-grade video and audio equipment and is set up in a room or backyard of a private home. Some studies show that films are rated better and generate more intense emotions when watched in a movie theater, but convenience is a major appeal for home cinemas. In the 1980s, home cinemas typically consisted of a movie pre-recorded on a LaserDisc or VHS tape; a LaserDisc Player or VCR; and a heavy, bulky large-screen cathode-ray tube TV set, although sometimes CRT projectors were used instead. In the 2000s, technological innovations in sound systems, video player equipment, TV screens and video projectors have changed the equipment used in home cinema set-ups and enabled home users to experience a higher-resolution screen image, improved sound quality and components that offer users more options. The development of Internet-based subscription services means that 2020s-era home theatre users do not have to commute to a video rental store as was common in the 1980s and 1990s.
Videodisc is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form. Typically, it is a reference to any such media that predates the mainstream popularity of the DVD format. The first mainstream official Videodisc was the Television Electronic Disc (TED) Videodisc, and the newest is the 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray Disc. As of September 2023, the active video disc formats are Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and in other regions because of the price difference from DVD, Video CD (VCD) and SVCD.
Video Ezy was an Australian home video rental business that offered titles on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray, as well as console video games, for rent. At its peak in the mid-2000s, Video Ezy had over 500 company-owned and franchised video rental shops in the country, and owned 40% of the Australian video rental market after taking over Blockbuster's Australian operations. The company also expanded internationally into New Zealand and Asia.
The Criterion Collection, Inc. is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A de facto subsidiary of arthouse film distributor Janus Films, Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinephiles and public and academic libraries. Criterion has helped to standardize certain aspects of home-video releases such as film restoration, the letterboxing format for widescreen films and the inclusion of bonus features such as scholarly essays and documentary content about the films and filmmakers. Criterion most notably pioneered the use of commentary tracks. Criterion has produced and distributed more than one thousand special editions of its films in VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats and box sets. These films and their special features are also available via The Criterion Channel, an online streaming service that the company operates.
Redbox Automated Retail, LLC was an American video rental and streaming media company, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Redbox specializes in its namesake automated DVD rental kiosks, and also operated transactional and ad-supported streaming video and television services. Since 2022, Redbox has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, Inc. is the American home video distribution division of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc. The BDA is divided into three levels of membership: the board of directors, contributors, and general members.
DVD region codes are a digital rights management technique introduced in 1997. It is designed to allow rights holders to control the international distribution of a DVD release, including its content, release date, and price, all according to the appropriate region.
20th Century Home Entertainment was a home video distribution arm that distributed films produced by 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, and 20th Century Animation and several third-party studios, as well as television series by 20th Television, Searchlight Television, 20th Television Animation, and FX Productions in home entertainment formats.
Sonic Solutions was an American computer software company headquartered in Novato, California. In addition to having a number of offices in the U.S., the company also maintained offices in Europe and Asia. It was acquired by Rovi Corporation in 2010.
Paramount Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Paramount Pictures.
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment LLC is the home video distribution division of Universal Pictures, an American film studio, owned by NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast.
The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind of digital data and has been widely used to store video programs, software and other computer files. DVDs offer significantly higher storage capacity than compact discs (CD) while having the same dimensions. A standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data, a dual-layer DVD up to 8.5 GB. Variants can store up to a maximum of 17.08 GB.
Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.
HD DVD is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format, but lost to Blu-ray, supported by Sony and others.
The high-definition optical disc format war was a market competition between the Blu-ray and HD DVD optical disc standards for storing high-definition video and audio; it took place between 2006 and 2008 and was won by Blu-ray Disc.
Kaleidescape, Inc. is an American multimedia company based in Mountain View, California. Founded in 2001, it designs multi-room home entertainment server systems that store and play back video and audio content to movie players that can be connected to televisions or projectors.
Home video is recorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD and Blu-ray. In a different usage, "home video" refers to amateur video recordings, also known as home movies.
UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an alliance of 85 companies that included film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.
Rebel Heart Tour is the fifth live album by American singer and songwriter Madonna, chronicling her tenth worldwide concert tour of the same name, recorded at the Sydney SuperDome. It was released on September 15, 2017 by Eagle Vision on DVD and Blu-ray formats and by Eagle Records for audio versions. Rebel Heart Tour also contains bonus content like excerpts from the Tears of a Clown show (2016) at Melbourne's Forum Theatre, as well as a 22-song double CD. Danny Tull and Nathan Rissman, who had worked on Madonna's previous concert films, directed Rebel Heart Tour.
As reported by Media Play News, Blu-ray Disc formats accounted for 75 per cent of Zack Snyder's Justice League's first-week unit sales.