Congratulations pour in, real work begins

Word spreads fast in the digital cinema community and many of you wrote to congratulate me on my new appointment. It was particularly heartwarming to hear from Dr. Charles Swartz, who has retired from ETC because of health problems, but still took time out to offer me his best wishes. Even some of our competitors, both existing and would-be digital, sent me a few kind words. This either proves the truth of the saying about whom it is that you should keep closer than your friends, or, that digital cinema is still at such an early stage that the fight is not between us but to jointly grow the digital cinema market size to the point of critical mass.

I won't bore you too much with the logistics of getting set up here at Deluxe in my first week. I'm still waiting for my MacBook, CrackBerry and business cards, all of which will hopefully arrive well before IBC. I am so much more productive with my gadgets and toys, but the beauty of the Lotus Notes system we use at Deluxe is that it has a pure Web interface access, so I can work on it from pretty much anywhere with Internet access. (For those few geeks that share my fascination of how desktop programs will eventually be replaced by Internet-only tools, this article from Guardian's Technology section is quite interesting.) Next week there's even the promise of my own desk and office space. I wonder if they will let me chose which film poster, which seems obligatory at all post and cinema service facilities, I get to put on the wall behind me.

But mainly I've been getting to grips with what needs doing for the next month, quarter and year. While Deluxe US has done impressive work on the digital cinema side for several years, which we hope to tap into, I won't pretend that we're not starting from behind here in Europe. At least compared to companies such as Arts Alliance Media and XDC that have established a solid track record in distributing DCPs. This notwithstanding the fact that Deluxe was the first in Europe to distribute a major Hollywood studio's title in the DCI-specified JPEG2000 format when Fox's 'Ice Age 2' was screened at three Nordisk cinemas in Denmark - though somehow Eclaire seems to have ended up with most of the credit for this event.

Nothing much in the way of digital cinema news has happened in the past three days, so you have to go back a week or so for some interesting announcements such as Kodak working with National CineMedia on a Theatre Management System, Thomson's watermarking being adopted by QuVis and others, as well as DTS buying up most of the IP of Avica. But who cares about that when there is the delicious falling out between Paramount and Tom Cruise? It rivals anything we've seen on our screens this summer for sheer star power and drama.