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

only 1 in 12 makes a profit?

[Russ Nelson]

Only 1 film in 12 makes a profit? Perhaps the films are not intended to make a profit, but instead are money laundering?
-russ

Re:Of course, low budget cameras BUT

[jcr]

Then you see 30 indians break into a dance while the evil killer is running away WHILE singing AND dancing.

I took a business trip to India a couple of years ago, and happened to see a bit of Indian MTV in my hotel. All of the Indian singers had vast throngs of dancers. Whenever an American or European act came on, it was jarring to only see the singer and four of five dancers. It looked like they just couldn't get the budget for a full-scale production. ;-)

-jcr

Re:Decrease Piracy?

[shawb]

I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of watermarking showed up in DVD's soon.

This is actually pretty unlikely for the near future. Commercial DVDs are generally stamped on a die rather than burned like a CD-R; I'm not quite sure, but I assume burning a DVD would take at least ten minutes on home equpment and this could probably be cut down a little, but one minute or even thirty seconds would probably be too much time on industrial presses. And the machinery required for burning high volumes would be much more complex and error prone than stamping. Stamping greatly reduces the cost and increases the durability of high volume runs, but pretty much ensures that every copy is identical, so watermarking would not be realistic, AFAIK. As for the small volumes sent out for promo copies and advance screeners, those could realistically be burned, and so watermarking those makes some sense and that is where you hear about this being done.

Re:Do you have any proof?

[sonamchauhan]

Here's a better article:
http://www.bollywhat.com/darkside.html

(As we Indians say: "Google zindabad" long live google) :-P