Good article on Technicolor's digital effort

Business Week has a good article on Technicolor's efforts in the digital cinema space. It gives both historical and current market context:

Technicolor, which was bought in 2000 by Thomson (TMS ) of France for $2.1 billion, is up against an aggressive new entrant, Access Integrated Technologies (AccessIT), as well as Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP), a joint venture of the three biggest theater chains, Regal Entertainment (RGC ), AMC Theatres, and Cinemark (CNK ). This summer could be the tipping point in the digital transition, as the number of U.S. theaters capable of showing movies in digital form finally exceeds 10% of the 35,000 U.S. screens. "This is a disruptive technology environment," says AccessITCEO A. Dale "Bud" Mayo.

Technicolor was founded in Boston in 1915. Swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks was enchanted by the possibility of making a pirate movie in color and relied on Technicolor's cameras to shoot The Black Pirate in 1926. The company received important boosts from Jack Warner, Warner Bros. co-founder, and Walt Disney. By the 1940s the phrase "Color by Technicolor" in a film's marketing campaign could boost ticket sales as much as 30%. But in the '50s, Eastman Kodak Co. (EK ) introduced a less expensive film stock that could run through any camera. That forced Technicolor into the business of processing film and manufacturing prints.

This month marks the anniversary of the Technicolor-Kinepolis announcement and to date only some 30-odd screens in Kinepolis' chain have been converted and no VPF deal has been announced for Europe. It is too soon to write off this deal, but it does illustrate the hurdles that European digital cinema business plans still face.

'Grease' director goes 3D for mobile phones

'Nightmare Before Christmas' took the honour of first re-rendered 2D-into-3D away from 'Grease', which appears stuck in the Dimensionalization(tm) equivalent of development hell. Yet the director behind the film, Randall Kleiser, appears to have caught the stereoscopic bug (along with Lucas, Cameron and half of Hollywood). The Hollywood Reporter has a story that he and his business partner have patented a technology for stereoscopic display in electronic screens:

Director Randal Kleiser and inventor Michael Mehrle are introducing a technology designed to enable the viewing of 3-D content on such mobile devices as PDAs and iPods without the use of special glasses.

Their startup, Neovision Labs, has developed this unique technology called iFusion, which is patent pending.

In addition to offering a new capability to consumers, Kleiser, whose credits include "Grease" and "Honey I Blew Up the Kid," and Mehrle believe this unique technology has the potential to help forward the 3-D movement by giving the studios a venue in which to repurpose their 3-D-produced content after its theatrical release.

It is not aimed at cinemas, but they are already going digital 3D anyway, but for the great market beyond:

The attachment would be secured over the device screen. Mehrle said the attachment would be marketed as an accessory for hand-held devices and would list for about $50.

This technology does not convert a 2-D film to 3-D; rather, consumers would download 3-D content to the device for viewing. The content could be animated or live-action films produced in 3-D or films that were produced in 2-D and later converted to 3-D (like "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas"). In addition to features, 3-D shorts, 3-D special-venue films and other such content could be used with the system.

The content has to be specially encoded for this application. "Basically, it's zero added costs. You can do it on a laptop," Mehrle said.

Kleiser said he hopes this development would help grow 3-D production. As a director, he is excited about the possibilities that 3-D offers to filmmakers. "The director wants to make the audience feel visually like part of the story; that's what 3-D does," Kleiser said. "Directors have another tool that they can use for dramatic emphasis. (Images) could come out of the screen into their faces, the way we would use a close-up."

Let's see if 'Grease' in digital 3D comes to a cell phone near you any time soon.

Fithian slams Arts Alliance's VPF plan

No one goes to the ICTA seminar expecting fireworks, but that's what we got this Sunday morning.

The normally sedate technology seminar tried something different when it invited the heads of NATO and UNIC. Having first talked about windows and piracy (sorry, 'movie theft'), we soon got on to everyone's favourite topic - digital cinema.

Without mentioning Arts Alliance Media by name - he is much to smart for that - John Fithian slammed the VPF business plan that was set to be unveiled the following day by AAM. I don't know if he had heard them trailer the announcement at the RAAM conference the previous week but he didn't need to as the details were all over the trades. Here is what the Hollywood Report wrote:

"At CineExpo we will be announcing that we have a VPF deal for Europe," AAM's Fiona Deans told delegates at the RAAM Digital Cinema conference in London on Thursday. "It might not be what everyone wants, but we think it is a fantastic opportunity for cinemas to digitize with distributors contributing."

It certainly wasn't what Fithian wanted to hear. Here is what he said at the ICTA event.

"Just because someone announces a deal with a couple of studios for a handful of territories doesn't make it right and doesn't mean it is happening."

He went on to characterized it as an 'attempt to fragment the market' and even called it 'bullshit' (yes, really).

What he must have particularly objected to was the following bit from AAM:

In a bid to encourage early adoption, Deans warned that the VPF deal wasn't "for an unlimited number of screens."

"We have a fixed number of screens that we can roll out to," she said. "And once those screens are signed up, we will have to go back to the studios and see whether they want to keep contributing at that level. This is obviously an incentive for people to start talking to us sooner rather than later."

Fithian was not swayed by this argument, calling for exhibitors to 'look at the fundamental economics of the deal.' He drove home the point by saying that "third-party integrators who go around and threaten to 'come and get it now because it will run out soon' have flawed economics." His words, not mine.

Fiona may just be echoing what some studios have been saying but it is not impressing the most important representative of the cinema industry. And what NATO believes, UNIC and European exhibitors are not likely to argue with it. Let's not forget that it was Fithian who helped kill off the premature original Technicolor digital cinema plan (PDF) in 2001.

It will be interesting to see how AAM will respon to this at tomorrow's Cinema Expo panel. I for one am expecting more fireworks.

China makes real on its digital cinema promise

I've always joked that the easiest way to make digital cinema happen is if you can write it into your Five Year Plan ('Comrades, a digital cinema within bicycling distance for every farmer, worker and soldier!' as Mao might have said). And for a while China was at the forefront with digital cinema through the government-led 100 digital screen test network.

Unfortunately the timing was such that the deployment that started in 2002 took place in the middle of the 1.3K to 2K transition and the growth stalled after the first 100. In the last year, however, there are renewed sign that China might once again take a Great Digital Cinema Leap Forward. The latest piece of news is that China Film Group and the somewhat unlikely partner Shougang Steel are to build 2,000 digital screens. This is what the Hollywood Reporter had to report on it:

Dubbed China Film Group & Shougang Digital Cinema Building Co. Ltd., the joint venture, first unveiled to local media last week, believes the use of digital cinema technology will help stem some of China's rampant movie piracy problem.

Last year, about 93% of the discs sold in China were illegal copies, costing moviemakers upward of $2.6 billion in lost ticket sales, according to MPA estimates.

"The goal of our cooperation is to build digital cinemas across the country," Han Sanping, CFGC's board chairman told the official Xinhua news agency. "We will build about 2,000 new digital screens before the end of 2008."

But it looks like the construction might stop before it's even began due to the fact that a construction ban kicks in ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. But it is a much needed growth for the exhibition sector in China. From the same article:

China now has about 3,000 modern movie screens, only 124 of which were digital in 2005, according to a recent report from the Nielsen Co. and Screen Digest. The number of digital screens in China rose from just 93 in 2004, with growth led by China Film, with 91 digital screens, and Stellar Film, with 27.

China Film's digital screens account for roughly half of their total 180 screens, a total that makes it the second-largest distributor in the country after Shanghai United Cinema Circuit, the report said.

What will they show on the digital screens? Well, in other Chinese digital cinema news ScreenDaily reports that Shrek 3 will get a digital-only release on 150 screens in China, which means that Hollywood titles are starting to return in digital after the studios put a halt to digital screenings, again because of piracy issues.

See 4K for yourself at Los Angeles' Landmark Westside Pavilion

Marc Cuban's Landmark cinemas gave Sony cause for concearn a year and a half ago when they announced at CES that they had chosen DLP Cinema projectors as the preferred technology, having previously sworn by 4K. They later said that they were still committed to 4K and that committment has been proven with the opening of their new showcase cinema in Los Angeles.

This is what the Hollywood Reporter had to say about it:

The debut of Landmark Theatres' new flagship complex called the Landmark, which opens Friday at Los Angeles' Westside Pavilion, prompts a closer examination of 4K resolution digital cinema, which represents four times the picture information found in today's commonly used 2K digital cinema resolution.

The Landmark opens with three theaters equipped with Sony's SXRD 4K digital cinema projectors. These -- and one at the Landmark-owned NuArt -- represent the only screens in Los Angeles that offer 4K projection for paying audiences.

Landmark already has ordered about 25 4K projectors from Sony, which is the only manufacturer offering 4K digital cinema projectors to theater owners. In addition to Los Angeles, there are installations in Landmark theaters in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington. Plans are to also install 4K technology in Baltimore and Denver.

They make a lot about the audience being given the chance to see the 4K quality for themselves, though at present this seems confined to a few trailers and special footage from Sony Pictures, while they wait for films shot using the new 4K cameras. But read to the end of the article and you discover that "The Landmark opens with a total of 12 auditoriums, three with 4K projection, three with Panasonic 2K digital cinema projectors and all 12 with film projectors. "

Never mind that Panasonic don't make 2K projectors in the commonly accepted sense of the word (2048x1080 DLP Cinema chips, as opposed to 1920x1080 standard DLP), it's 35mm that still rules the day. In the meantime, Landmark is having an open relationship with Sony and TI.

Kuwait - latest country to be "first" to switch to digital cinema

The list of countries planning to be 'first' to switch over all of its cinemas to digital is growing. Kuwait now joins the ranks of Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Norway in this non-Olympic competition sport. This is what an article Kuwait on the cusp of a D-cinema revolution from ArabianBusiness.com has to say:

Kuwait is set to become the first country in the world to boast an all-digital cinema (D-cinema) network, under an auspicious plan by the country's dominant cinema chain, Kuwait National Cinema Company (KNCC).

KNCC, which operates the Cinescape chain in Kuwait, recently contracted Indian company Real Image Media Technologies (RIMT) to develop a pilot D-cinema project installed in its flagship Kuwait City cinema multiplex. The project involved the installation of Real Image's Qube high definition XP-D DCI compliant digital cinema server and a Cinemeccanica 2K digital projector.

I'm not sure what they mean with statements like that the installation "surpasses the 2K quality standard agreed upon by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI)." (Do they mean 4K? I don't think so.) The article is right, however, that Kuwait like much of the Middle East is a unique market in that it has films from Hollywood, India (Bollywood) and Arabic Countries. As such, the deal is a coup for RIMT.

However, I'm less sure of the 'first country' thing. For a starter, I'd be tempted to take a handful of 2K projectors to Andorra claim to have switched over an entire country to digital. Kuwait, Singapore and Luxembourg are independent states, but they are also those odd questions in Trivial Pursuit's Geography category. The article itself tells the full story of the numbers, in that "KNCC plans to digitise 40 existing cinema screens and establish a further 50 digital theatres across Kuwait over the next 12 months." For it to count I'd say you need to get up to at least 100 for it to count.

So it's still a race between Ireland or Norway - and my money is firmly on Norway being first.