Getting national(istic) about digital cinema

Even those of us ho did not attend NAB2007 and the Digital Cinema Summit could not fail to notice that Germany has been profiling itself particularly prominently this year. The Germans have been part of the digital cinema scene for a while, particularly in recent months through the work of Fraunhofer, but this is the largest concerted effort yet to group it all together under one banner. There was even a press release issued about it:

Under the heading "D-Cinema and Beyond," the full digital-cinema process chain was presented to the professional public. The event was realised by "Invest in Germany - Land of Ideas" a common project of the initiative "Germany - Land of Ideas" and the federal investment promotion agency "Invest in Germany". The presentation centred on the 5k Multi-Projection technology developed for digital cinema by the Fraunhofer Society's Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin.

Source: Germany - Land of Ideas
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Apart from the Fraunhofer Institutes in Berlin and Erlangen, the cooperation partners also include the camera manufacturer ARRI, T-Systems' Media&Broadcast arm as a service provider to the media and broadcast industry, and the software and hardware manufacturer DVS.

It reminded me of the effort last autumn to bring together various French digital cinema interests under the ISA banner, particularly for the screening of the 4K mastered 'Paris Je Taim' at the ETC (link to PDF), which united CN films, CST, Doremi, Eclair Digital Cinema, Open Cube, SmartJog and Thomson Content Security (but not Technicolor). And the first one ever was ofcourse the UK's Department of Trade and Industry that united Britain's various manufacturers and interest parties through the Electronic Film Group. Italy has also attempted this type of thing, but on a much smaller scale (primarily Elsacom and Marina Studios) and I guess it would be possible to include Japan's original T-Joy consortium under this banner too.

Do such groupings work? The track record seems to be that they can raise awareness in the short term and pull off individual demonstrations and events, but work less well for establishing a long term united business. Ironically, digital cinema is too small to depend on all the businesses in one country being a perfect match. The ideal grouping is often an international effort with servers, projectors, and software coming from different countries. The countries that have done best were those that had a strong government drive to push together hardware partners with the cinemas, something that appears neglected in groupings such as those of France and Germany.

Countries that did well in this early on were China and Singapore. Today the crown is carried by Norway, thanks to the D-Cinema Alliance that has managed to get all stakeholders around the table to thrash out a roadmap for the all-digital future. Just don't expect them to sponsor a breakfast or coctails in Las Vegas.