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Digital Film Distribution System Coming
aniyo~ writes with word of a collaboration of movie studios with distribution companies to come up with a system for rapid digital distribution of movie masters. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners are working on technology that will allow much more responsive film distribution based on local needs. DCIP is wholly owned by the Regal, AMC, and Cinemark theater chains, which among them run 14,000 screens in North America. The new system would be available to those and other interested theater operators. About 2,200 U.S. theater screens currently show digital films, and today these are, by and large, delivered on hard drives.
I can't wait for beaming movies crossing my front yard. I hope the password is admin.
They're probably going to want to put some protection on those drives to make sure the movies are only show in the theater they were sent to. The theater can share with a friend theater but only on a limited basis. There's some indication that the theaters may be able to share wirelessly at some point but that doesn't really seem to work right now. A theater's right to show the film can be revoked at any time but it doesn't really matter since a major outlet already left the key in the clear.
Nothing, but nothing will ever beat the real thing: Three Strip Technicolor.
Sometimes real "stuff" is better than bits and pixels.
but come on....do a little better than that. Theaters are a thing of the past. Tell me why the hell am I going to pay a crap load of money for a shitty experience? A lot of times most movie theaters are run by teenagers who barely have any respect for anyone and can care less about your experience. You pay a lot for a washed out picture with a bunch of people around you that can't turn off their cell phones or they bring their kids in. I can watch a movie on a big screen or my 24" monitor at home or a friends house that has much better picture and I can drink beer. It is all about comfort and quality, and theaters just lack both. Paying $10-15 just for an hour and a half experience is not worth it. MPAA and studios....move on, please. Get in the 21st century. Thanks, bye.
Digital Cinema Implementation Partners today revealed a technology to send movies without physically moving hard drives. They have patented this innovative technology and tentatively named it Film Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Sure there will be some savings incurred without having to produce the reels but it's the licensing cost that's causing the high price.
You are dead on. I worked in a theatre for a while as a projectionest duing the economic downturn in the 1980's. To get one of the current releases, theatres bid on them. The submitted bid includes things liKe a percentage of ticket sales and number of seats in the auditorium and a factor from past performance and location in relation to other theatres.
This combo keeps new releases out of small theatres and theatres with poor performance. This is the big divide between new release theatres and second run theatres. It is common for a new release to get bid up to over 100% of ticket sales. Many theatres simply have no revenue except concessions sales due to the cost of the feature. They bid on the movies to fill the seats and get consessions sales. That is why it's over $10 for a bucket of popcorn and a couple drinks.
This is effecient for the distributor as they easly maximize profit and often take 100% of the ticket revenue for the limited number of reels, but it is devastiating for a smaller theatre. This is why many of them have moved to indi films or porn. They are stuck with small audiances due to the older flims and can't win any bids for new films. They fold or go to alternatives. I know. Been there done that.
The truth shall set you free!
I actually had a chance to meet with Walt Ordway, the head of DCI's technology branch, at my school a few years ago (he's a Northeastern University Alumnus). He gave a really nice presentation about what they're doing to secure the distribution masters and minimize piracy. Basically, they have a Digital Source Master (DCM) which is a final cut of the movie in a high definition format taken directly from post-processing. From this, they make various distribution masters in different formats for DVD, TV, Airline showings, and also conversion to film masters. One of the masters they make is a Digital Cinema Distribution Master. After processing, this is what is actually sent to the cinemas.
m _Spec_v1.pdf
After all the video, audio, subtitle, and auxiliary data channels (things like cues for curtains, theater lighting, etc.) are compressed and packaged, it's encrypted via AES with a 128-bit key. Along with the compression and encryption process, a watermark is embedded into the video source. The Digital Cinema Package (DCP), as it is now called, is delivered to the theater via satellite uplink, hard drive delivery, internet, etc. However, the encryption key is delivered separately, via secure courier, and each theater will get a different key. The DCP is uploaded into a central server in the theater, where it will then be scheduled by the manager to be loaded into a specific screen on a set schedule. Each screen will have a digital projector along with its own server to store a local copy of the DCP.
Key entry and decryption only actually happens when the movie is played, and as everything is decrypted, the forensic watermark is added to the video as well as the audio. This watermark is unique not only to the theater, but to the specific projector and even the time that it was played. This ensures that if anyone is sitting in a theater with a camcorder, they can trace it back to the exact showing using the embedded watermarks.
If anyone is interested in checking out the Digital Cinema System Specifications, they were awarded final approval on July 20, 2005 and can be found at http://www.dcimovies.com/DCI_Digital_Cinema_Syste
If you look through the document you linked, the security section is 25 pages long, while only a few pages are dedicated to image and sound. For the image, the system mostly talks about 2K, with some additional modes for 4K, but no requirement to use it, and no inclusion of the higher framerate 48fps mode for 4K. Considering there are already 4K film releases and 2K is already in the home, this does not seem very forward thinking. Home theater freaks have been saying for years what they have at home is better than what's in theaters. For the first time, they will actually be right, if theatrical 2K becomes the de-facto standard (which it already has to some extent, thanks to an overload of crappy 2K digital intermediates).
Another short-sighted mistake is that it defines the image as a constant width format, meaning you get fewer pixels for a scope image vs. non-scope. Does that seem backwards to anyone else? The 2K scope image only has 858 vertical pixels, for crying out loud! (page 14)
Page 14 also specifies: "The bit depth for each code value for a color component shall be 12 bits. This yields 36 bits per pixel." Doesn't say whether it's linear or log (like Cineon). I assume linear, but considering most linear film work is done in a 16-bit space (see the GIMP spin-off "CinePaint), this doesn't seem like enough. All theatrical digital presentations I've seen so far have been severely lacking in dynamic range compared to film. This document totally fails to address that.
There is also a data limitation of just over 1MB per frame, regardless of whether the image is 2K or 4K (page 25). That's just stupid (hopefully I don't have to explain why).
There seems to have been very little consideration given to quality for either the present or the future. Simply slapping a big HDTV into theaters is a bad, short-sighted idea, and will surely be a further nail in the coffin for theatrical presentations. AMC for example has lost money for nine years straight, and now they want to dump money into this shit?
Free Hans!