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Technology
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November 17, 2009
Motion Picture Heritage liberates Hollywood Theater
DORMONT, PA — The Hollywood Theatre. was in danger of being mothballed when local councilman John Maggio had an idea. He reached out to Motion Picture Heritage who had just finished re-fitting a drive-in in Shelbyville, Indiana to come on board to bring the Hollywood back to life. MPH had just done the unthinkable, they had implemented a low cost digital projection system for use in a drive-in, total cost $10,000. The principals of MPH fell in love with the Hollywood, a 400 seat theatre in the green South Hills of Pittsburgh. August 1st, the theatre came to life again featuring over 6 new titles every week.
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September 24, 2009
Up to 15,000 additional screens slated to get digital 3-D
At a “3-D Entertainment Summit” held in Los Angeles on September 16, major exhibitors were heartened to hear that financing was being made available to equip thousands of additional screens for digital 3-D films over the next five years. Currently, there are about 2,700 screens equipped for digital 3-D exhibition, a number which exhibitors believe seriously limits their profits from the increasing number of 3-D films studios are releasing. Still, some theater owners were skeptical that that the number of 3-D venues would increase as rapidly as projected.
To date there are only 2,700 3-D screens in North America, limiting the potential returns that studios can reap from the higher ticket prices from 3-D releases (moviegoers typically must pay an extra $3 to see 3-D films). With the new financing, that number is expected to grow by 4,000 by the of the year, or nearly 10% of all screens in North America.
Here’s the rest of the story from the L.A. Times.
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September 10, 2009
Reflections on the fate of the independent exhibitor
This piece from Digital Cinema Report looks at how the digital transition is affecting the small-town independent theater operator.
As the industry undergoes the most transformative revolution since the talkies, film perforations give way to binary digits. A relatively simple and competent 100-year-old technology surrenders to expensive computerized projection. There are clear benefits, to be sure, but exhibitors have been conflicted. Nowhere is the conflict more pronounced than among the small-town, few-screen operators who have anchored the movie industry in countless communities across North America. Independent theatre operators have been performing an essential and valuable service for the movie industry for generations, and they’ve been doing fine. The margins may not have been great, but these are people with a passion for showing movies, creating a culture of movie consumption, and becoming cultural bastions in their communities. That has been reward enough.
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July 17, 2009
3-D starting to look flat
This piece in the Los Angeles Times suggests the excitement surrounding 3-D films is beginning to cool down.
As more movies play in digital 3-D, there’s evidence that audiences are becoming less interested in the ballyhooed format that many in Hollywood have predicted will stem the long-term erosion of theater attendance.
Box office data for “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” which opened last Wednesday, shows that theaters with at least one screen playing the film in 3-D generated on average, 1.4x as much in ticket sales as those that only showed the picture the old fashioned 2-D way. (A breakdown by individual screens within multiplexes was not available.)
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June 30, 2009
RealD achieves 100% growth worldwide
More and more theaters are equipping themselves for RealD as the company makes huge gains.
RealD announced today that it has doubled its installation base of RealD 3D equipped cinema screens worldwide and notched 400% growth in Europe in the first half of 2009. Far and away the world’s largest 3D cinema platform, RealD’s network of theatres is expanding at a breathtaking clip, nearly doubling the number of 3D cinema installations of all other 3D providers combined. The RealD 3D platform now accounts for over 8,700 screens under contract and over 3,200 screens installed in more than 45 countries with over 200 exhibition partners.
Read more at MarketWatch.
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Cinemark makes deal with T.I.
Trying to keep up with Sony, Texas Instruments announces a deal with Cinemark along with mentioning they will be rolling out 4K projectors next year.
Current leader Texas Instruments has revealed that during 2010 it aims to incorporate 4K resolution as part of its next-gen projection technology platform, which will be offered in projectors from its licensees Barco, Christie Digital and NEC.
Meanwhile, Barco inked a significant deal with Cinemark to deploy the developing 4K technology exclusively on all Cinemark screens.
Read more at The Wrap.
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June 25, 2009
Call for 3D Olympics screenings
A former producer fights for more digital film acceptance in Great Britain and for the Olympics to be shown in theaters in 3D.
Digital technology could enable the 2012 Olympics to be shown in 3D in cinemas across the UK, former film producer Lord Puttnam has said.
It should be possible to show the London Olympics “every single day in 3D on every screen in the country”, he said at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Read more in the BBC News.
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June 23, 2009
More digital projectors, coming to a theater near you
This piece in the New York Times discusses the differences between 2K and 4K digital projection.
Movie theaters throughout the world are shedding their old film projectors and installing digital versions. Digital cinema offers pristine, scratch-free, rock-solid images and super-sharp pictures.
In the fight for digital cinema product share, Sony has made 4K resolution its signature difference between it and Texas Instruments, its rival in the field. According to Sony, 4K, with four times as many pixels on the screen compared with T.I.’s 2K technology, offers a far sharper image, which will draw consumers back to the movies.
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May 20, 2009
It’s Official: Regal to go all 4k by Sony
According to an article in today’s Hollywood Reporter, Sony has inked a deal with the no. 1 cinema chain in America, Regal Entertainment, to outfit all of its existing theaters with the same 4k technology that will be used in AMC’s theaters.
The deal represents Sony’s second big d-cinema hardware coup in the past few months. In March, it struck an agreement with AMC Entertainment — which operates the second-biggest U.S. circuit — to supply its theaters with digital projectors.
Both rollouts will begin once Digital Cinema Implementation Partners locks into a bank deal to facilitate digital installations for Regal, AMC and Cinemark, the nation’s three biggest exhibitors.
Read more in the Hollywood Reporter.
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April 1, 2009
Sony to install digital projectors in all AMC theaters
The digital cinema arm of Sony Corporation said last weekend that it will install all existing AMC theater locations with digital projectors starting in Q2 2009.
Sony says it has signed a $315 million deal to install its digital projectors in all AMC Entertainment theaters.
The contract will close the gap between Sony and Texas Instruments in the digital projector market. Texas Instruments has equipped 5,476 screens in North American theaters with its digital light processing projectors. The deal with AMC will increase Sony’s presence to about 5,000 screens.
Read the full story in the New York Times.