India's Bollywood Opts for Low-Cost Digital Cinema

Makarand writes "While Hollywood is yet to figure out who will pay for the costly $100,000 digital projectors required for the digital roll-out of films, the Mumbai (India) based film Industry (called Bollywood) is settling for cheaper projectors of a bit lesser quality available at one-third the price, to proceed with their digital roll-out. Industry officials call this cheaper version of the digital cinema the 'E-Cinema', in contrast to the 'D-Cinema' which Hollywood is waiting for. Over 1000 films are made each year in India and just 1 film in 12 makes a profit. Transporting conventional celluloid prints to remote towns gives video pirates plenty of time to copy and make prints. Digital cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase its profits."

Comments

Re:Decrease Piracy?

[DarkMan]

True. However, that's not the problem. It dosen't really matter how hard it is to copy a film, it's currently happening.

At the moment, with film, it's not economic to roll out a film everywhere at once. Therefore there is a time lag between the first showings, and when it's available to view locally. This time lag is where the pirates are operating. If you can remove this lag, then one of the benefits of pirated films (faster access) is removed. Digital projectors bring the benefits of digital copying to the movie producers, as opposed to currently, where only the pirates are reaping the benefits.

As I understand it then, Bollywood is trying to defeat piracy by starving the pirates of a market.

^What he said^

[TubeSteak]

The article says nothing about encrypted disks/formats or whatever.

BUT I found a press release from RealImage which explains that the distribution method is by satellite.

So I'm assuming they'll use an encrypted satellite feed to send the movies to theaters.

Film distribution via satellite is yet to pick up in other countries chiefly because distances are not too daunting overseas and thus it is not viewed as much of a cost saver, says a trade observer.

But in India it has become an instant hit, given the vast geographical spread

Reading some of their other press releases gives some good info: The distro method is web based, so theaters can pick whatever they want from a server.

The other tidbit i picked up is that "The films in the MPEG 2 format will take 20 hours to download depending on the connectivity"

Indian cinema is not Bollywood

[bayankaran]

Bollywood is used to identify the 100 plus Hindi cinema coming from Mumbai (Bombay). India has major film producing centers in Chennai for Tamil films (Madras), Hyderabad for Telugu films, Bangalore for Kannada Films, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi (Cochin)for Malayalam Films, Kolkatha (Calcutta) for Bengali films, Guwahati for Assamese films etc., where the other 900 plus films are made every year.

What you see in theaters in UK/USA/New Zealand/Australia/other countries are Hindi films catering to the Non-Resident-Indian audience. And most cities will have one or two theaters that cater to Tamil films, Bengali films, Malayalam films, Kannada films and Telugu films.

The examples you gave were of poorly made films. To understand Indian cinema, try the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, Shaji N Karun, Shyam Benegal, Ketan Mehta, Girish Kasaravalli etc. You will not be disappointed.