My digital cinema perspective on India

I have been in India for one month now and this an incredibly exciting time to be here. The Sensex just crossed 20,000 - it took 20 years for it to pass 10,000 but barely 20 months to double that. Mukesh Ambani has overtaken Bill Gates as the world's richest individual. Were he to re-team with his younger brother Anil (who controls the Reliance ADA Group, which in turn controls Adlabs) - they would be worth more than $100bn between them, easily making them richer than the Walton family. Booming times indeed. And on the digital side things are no less breathtaking.

This past weekend I was asked to take give a presentation and chair a discussion on digital cinema at the India Broadcast Expo 2007. I provided some global numbers from Screen Digest and DCinemToday on where global roll-out stands, as well as getting into the nitty gritty of DCI, compliance, VPF, ODS and more. We then had a very stimulating panel discussion with the top names from India's D-Cinema and e-cinema sectors. A very sharp journalist from IndianTelevision.com was there, asked pertinent questions and had published an article on the event the same evening:

Cinemeta Entertainment CEO Raj Grover said, "We intend to get into metros and tier-I, tier-II cities across the country. A chain of about 50 cinemas is in the pipeline across Gujarat, wherein we are acquiring single theatres, thus taking up their complete management rights. Currently, we are in the process of choosing the right format and standard for projection."

Real Image which started off as audio and post-production has also become a significant player in South India, thanks to their Qube technology. Director Senthil Kumar said, "Although digital cinema is in the transition phase, it is driving local and national advertisers to this medium. It's helping them target audiences better. This meanwhile, is also helping us evolve a territory specific business models like we have done in Tamil Nadu."

UFO Moviez CTO Makarand Karanjkar however adopted a different stance. He said that UFO is an infrastructure provider and a facilitator between the distributor and exhibitor to make their business viable, cutting down costs significantly for them. "We figured out the business model first and then made the technology work for us," he said.

I couldn't have summarized it better myself. A lot of the discussion centered on India's e-cinema model, though Karanjkar insisted that it was 'digital cinema' as far as they were concerned and that the quality and security was on par with what DCI had come up with. (I had to bite my tongue at this and other occasions, as my main task was to moderate the discussion.)

Equally interesting is the fact that given the severe under-screening of India, IBE Expo convenor Anil Chopra predicted that we could see the growth of 100,000 new cinema screens to meet demand and that digital (e- or d-) had the potential to 'leap frog' by going straight for digital distribution.

There can also be no denying the success that UFO Moviez (not to be confused with the unidentified flying object spotted over Kolkata this Monday morning) has made of e-cinema in India. The Economic Times of India has a long article ('Reviving cinema halls') that gives a good perspective on just what they have achieved, noting that:

Digital prints have played a huge part in the growth of the industry and is one of the critical reasons that most of the big ticket movies can release with a bigger print run., While so far, UFO’s biggest print run had been 360 prints with Heyy Babby, Om Shanti Om (OSO) and Saawairya are expected to cross that. “Between the two we should release at least 650-700 prints if not more.

Though the theatres get booked only a few days before the release, OSO will be at least 350-400 and could go up to 500,” adds Mishra. From the 300 released last Diwali between Don and Janneman, it’s a big jump. Like Mishra points out, the fact is that digital prints are not only matching the analogue ones, but at times crossing them as well.

So while we laud what Christie/AIX has done to kick start digital cinema in the West, in India digital distribution of film to cinemas is already overtaking 35mm! Not just that, but in a more adulating article e-cinema is even credit with saving the environment. With a title like 'Digital cinema reduces carbon dioxide emissions, too' you would expect the interview with Raaja Kanwar to highlight the green credentials of UFO, and it does:

Digital cinema’s contribution is not merely restricted to commercial benefits. It has brought about long lasting positive impact on the environment as a whole. The technical solution has helped the Indian film industry curb environmental pollution.

Indeed, if you put up a dim image on a 50 foot screen with a single-chip DLP projector from Panasonic you are not going to consume as much power as a 35mm projector or a 2K DLP Cinema projector. But you are also not giving the audience a true quality experience.

These efforts have not gone entirely un-noticed in the West. MPAA's Dan Glickman is in town and lauded the efforts of India to stamp out piracy. As reported in the Hollywood Reporter:

Glickman lauded recent anti-piracy developments in India, such as the adoption of a resolution in the state of Maharashtra that makes video piracy an offense that carries a minimum sentence, but he added that "much more needs to be done."

According to MPA data, India's domestic industry suffers more from piracy here than do imported films, which account for just 20% of pirated goods. Despite the recent growth in theatrical revenue for Indian films overseas, MPA data indicates that in the U.S., home video revenue for Indian films has declined by 75% over the past three years because of rampant piracy.

Later in the article gets around to digital cinema, or the UFO version of it, noting that:

India also is home to the world's largest network of digital cinemas. Mumbai-based UFO Moviez operates more than 1,000 screens, but most are not compliant with the Hollywood studios' Digital Cinema Initiative guidelines. Dubbed versions of Hollywood titles therefore are not released on this system, given that there are only six DCI-compliant screens in India.

Instead of writing "most are not compliant" with DCI guidelines they should have written 'none are compliant' because they distribute in MPEG-4 format and only Sathyam has six 2K digital cinema screens in Chennai. On the tricky issue of why the Sony Pictures-produced Saawariya is being released on 250+ non-DCI screens, Glickman is forced to cop out with a "This is a commercial decision by the studio, and we really can't comment on this."

The reason is because there is no true 2K alternative in India. Yet. But that will change.

Yesterday the founder of Adlabs, Manmohan Shetty and his daughter Pooja, announced that they were stepping down two years after selling a controlling stake to Reliance. That's the very rich company I mentioned at the start of this blog. They don't enter a market unless it is to be Number One. They have already made Adlabs India's largest cinema chain. Next on their agenda is digital. Like I said, these are very interesting times to be here.