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Brazil Takes Lead in All-Digital Cinema Projection
securitas writes "The CS Monitor's Andrew Downie reports that Brazil plans to open in May the world's largest digital movie theater network. About 100 theaters will use Sao Paulo-based Rain Networks' KinoCast digital theater DRM software. Rain based its system on Windows Media 9 software with MPEG-4 video compression. 'The MPEG-4 software can squeeze a feature film onto a file of just five gigabytes, 15 times smaller than the MPEG-2 technology presently used' at one-third the $150,000 cost. It takes 20 minutes to distribute a 90-minute film over a VPN and the system avoids the costs associated with transporting physical copies to areas largely inaccessible by road - it can cost up to $750,000 for 500 copies of a Matrix-type blockbuster to be distributed. Interestingly, in the affluent USA the fight between the 35,000 theater owners and Hollywood is about who will pay for cinemas to switch to digital projection. In December 2003 the Guardian published a story with more financial and technical details of the KinoCast digital cinema system."
Its nice to go to the Cinema and have amazing sound, now we can watch the films and not have scratchy, popping, projected images!
Wonder how long before it's cracked? This is going to bring a whole new meaning to Screeners ^.^
Can someone comment on the security and encryption of WMV9?
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I run an independant Cinema and the cost per film is approximately 200-250 per showing. A lot of this cost is distribution and storage of the prints, so if digital projection happens then I would expect to see a suitable reduction in costs.
Prints wear out, which is why the image gets worse over time, however the resolution of 35mm is much greater than that of most digital systems that I know of.
DVD and DiVX look Awful on a big screen as you can see the artifacts on the system. This asks the question how it can be suitable for the large cinema screens.
Also converting a cinema to digital, while still having the ability to show film is going to be expensive. So who should pay the cinema, or the company that is saving millions on costs.
Another interesting point is do the distributers and films companies apporvie of the system?
If not it will die on it's feet before it even starts.
Call this a biased opinion from somebody who maintains windows servers (The cinema is in my spare time) but I can't see it being that long before the MS DRM (or any other system for that matter) is broken.
If this happens then all releases will go back to film as piracy is such a concern.
Even though most digital projection systems are lower resolution than film they appear higher resolution when projected since there is no film gate weave as the film moves through the tranport mechanism of the projector.
I suppose they were thinking about distribution to, say, Manaus, which is a big city in the middle of the Amazon. There are additional delivery costs either by air or by water. A digital delivery scheme would be faster and cheaper.
Nobody is building theaters where there is no basic infrastructure. There are just natural obstacles to be overcome, like the size of the country and the remoteness of some highly populated areas with good infrastructure.
This is exactly like the US. You can hire a plane to deliver your movies, or you can put bits down a backbone. Guess which is becoming increasingly more attractive.
I live in Brazil's capital (which happens to be Brasilia, not Buenos Aires :), and there's not even a THX movie theather.
(8-DCS)
Brazil is a nation where technology costs much: US$ 1,00 can buy R$ 2,90 (Real - local currency) and there are heavy taxes on imported material. When running low on budget you have to be creative to solve problems and reduce costs. That's why the elections here are all digital for more than 5 years ago (it costs less and it's more secure than the classic way) and why banks here have more clients using internet to access the bank systems than anywhere in the world. Can this system be the best? Maybe not... but surely it can help to make easier to distribute the movies faster while lowering costs. And it can also help the local cinema industry to increase the audiences and revenue.
Your eyes are only capable of seeing 20-25 fps. This is why you do not see fluorescent links blink on and off. For this reason you will not notice when cimema projection will increase speed from 25-60 fps.
20-25fps are sufficient with motion blur, which naturally occurs on motion film with long exposures. Film can start looking jittery when filmed in very bright outdoor scenes.
60fps on computer games can look jittery because there is no exposure. It's just a rendered frame at that exact instant in time, and because of this your eyes can pick up on the sudden changes between frames. The effect is called temporal aliasing.
Adding a motion blur, or simply blending with the previous frame can smooth out this affect.
This generally should not be a problem with film images projected digitally.
Seriously, who's going to be able to afford the $50,000 equipment ... ... ... ... ... ...
Do you have any idea how much costs a current, analog projection gear?
... and DSL connections
if you had RTFA you would know the connection is satellite-based.
... when they don't have accessible roads.
what the fsck? the digital gear is way lighter, and it can be transported by air, water... now, if you were talking about DSL/fiber...
... Obviously, this won't be an affluent area.
? this has absolutely no logic. BR is a country bigger than continental US. don't you think we have big cities in less-acessible places (p.ex. Manaus)and to which digitally sending the movie is way cheaper?
... How do the theater owners actually plan on making money off this?
Hmmm... it's better than an analog refit to an old theater? it's cheaper in the long run, and we can keep fees low (in a middle-sized town, a movie fee is, like U$1-U$2 down here).
And, something you prolly don't know, cinema is in in BR lately, and many mid-sized and small towns are getting new/refitted movie theaters...
... And as for the $1500 cost of physical film, that's a moot point. Places like that will likely get it 3-6 months and 3rd or 4th-hand after the film has been circulated throughout other countries.
Only now they can get the film as fast as the other places, because there is not only one copy that has to be transported!!
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Damn. I must have run Fight Club in the multiplexes a zillion times but I was never monitoring the sound when that exchange came up. Mind you, in 19 years doing it for a living I've never heard anybody call cue marks "cigarette burns."
As to splicing single frames of pr0n into features, it's a nice urban legend but in reality anybody even casually watching will notice the frame. Go back to the changeover cues we were just talking about -- each of the two cues is printed on 4 frames, or about 1/6th of a second. They HANG there on the screen. One frame of something totally different would be CLEARLY visible to even the most clueless observer.
Not to mention, the jump that would occur on the screen and the pop in the sound about a second and a third afterwards.
As for it being a shit job, you tell me...I've run probably 5,000 films or more, watched likely well over half of them and was paid a reasonable salary for the priviledge. At the height of my career in that industry I worked 5 days of 10-hour shifts one week and two days of 10-hour shifts the following week. I got to work with toys I loved, learned an incredible amount about electronics and sound and got to sleep in till the crack of noon most days.
I'd sell my left nut to do that today.
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT