industry news

Worldwide Digital Projection Gaining Momentum

Ed Hobson, VP, National TeleConsultants, Inc. (Burlingame, CA) (www.ntc.com) helped kick off this year’s Digital Cinema Summit, held in conjunction with the 2005 NAB Conference in Las Vegas, saying that “3D and Star Wars may drive digital cinema.”

The opening session of the two-day event was well attended by a broad audience that included film and television technologists, and business planners. Jerry Pierce, Sr. VP, technology at Universal Pictures (Universal City, CA) (www.universalpictures.com), echoed the message that “Lucas is a strong force in d-cinema.” The experience so far indicates that, “consumers like d-cinema – and TI projectors work dependably.”

 

A business and technology panel on the newly released DCI Digital Cinema Specification (see separate story) featured Pierce and industry colleagues Walt Ordway, CTO of DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC) (Hollywood, CA) (www.dcimovies.com), and Howard Lukk, executive director of production technology at Walt Disney Studios (Burbank, CA) (studioservices.go.com/disneystudios).

The specification, jointly developed by DCI and the DC28 Technology Committee of film and television standards group SMPTE (Hartsdale, NY) (www.smpte.org), is aimed at providing theatergoers a “better-than-home experience,” while reducing film distribution costs, which can hit $600-700M per year in print costs. Further goals of the work include deployment as a worldwide system, and support for 3D and 48fps pictures. The group has also produced a 12-minute movie - Standardized Evaluation Material (StEM) that will serve as a quality tool for both the production and projection communities.

A distinction was made regarding “e-cinema,” which is essentially the theater operators’ use of business projectors for ads and promos. While this use could certainly be incorporated into the d-cinema projector, a clean integration of the various support systems is as yet undeveloped.

Internationally however, there seems to be mixed support for the DCI specification. Gwendal Auffret, CEO of Avanti Digital (Paris, France) ( www.avantidigital.com), said that, while AFNOR supports the use of the 2K portion of DCI, the French Ministry is guarded regarding the DCI spec, which is seen as “driven by Hollywood media interests,” and is possibly “too complex” for a rural theater. There is also growing interest in a European body to certify systems independently. It would seem that part of the reasoning for this split is embedded in the higher vertical integration of European media groups, together with the French cinema business model, which includes a per-ticket fee that goes to the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) (Paris, France) ( www.cnc.fr) to help subsidize industry equipment.

D-cinema is seen as “both a challenge and a threat” to local French culture, due to the possible increased influx of American content. Nonetheless, the European Digital Cinema Forum (EDCF) (Bucks, England) ( www.digitalcinema-europe.com) is carrying out various projects to develop d-cinema and e-cinema, the latter, especially, in rural areas.

In Japan, the Digital Cinema Common Specification Development Project (DCCSDP) has set an aggressive goal to develop technology to drive and support the rollout of d-cinema. This rollout is seen as driven by a “big project”: the Beijing 2008 Olympics. NTT labs, IMAGICA and JVC have partnered to produce what was hailed as “the world’s first 4K digital screening” last fall, calling it “a big step to d-cinema deployment.”

At the 2004 Tokyo International Film Festival in Nabio, Japan, a digital screening of the film “Shitsukakuen” “drew tears from women in the audience.” The screenings were shown using a 4K JVC D-ILA projector, with three 1.7-inch R-LCD imagers operating at between 96 and 120 Hz, producing 8000 ANSI lumens on a 500-inch screen. In order to carry the high bandwidth digital video signal, four HD-SDI interfaces were used in parallel. The screening also featured the use of a Sony 4K projector.

The SMPTE DC28 Group anticipates publishing 15 key standards this year, including various video quality documents (surprisingly, there are no audio quality documents slated for release.) SMPTE expects further d-cinema meetings in June/July in Asia/Sydney/LA, and in September and December in LA. The DCI organization is slated to disband this September.

Contact:
Insight Media
Annmarie Gabisch, 203-831-8564
annmarie@insightmedia.info