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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."
Well, it might not be better to just run it out of the box, but my personal experience is that mplayer is a better movie player than wmp, so a system built on that I think would be better.
You're right though that I'm not at all objective in this matter =)
I think it's great that the movie industry finally wakes up and smells the java. Cudos to Brazil for this bold move. So - now they have this fancy all digital top notch movie theatre - where are the films? With Hollywood being overly paranoid over piracy, will they agree to upload their new blockbuster hit to a server in Brazil?
And - while we're on the subject - will this result in more piracy? Or just better (picture) quality piracy? I think the answer is the latter. So - if this doesn't mean *more* piracy, then what's there to be afraind of, Hollywood?
I have a feeling that if some area is inaccessible by road, it's not likely to have DSL or fiber running to it either.
To quote from the article:
Rain Networks has developed a system called KinoCast, which downloads films into cinemas via satellite and then controls projection through a central computer working remotely on a virtual private network (VPN).