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Author
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Topic: Carmike installing 2300 Christie/AIX DLP systems
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Jason Setzer
Film Handler
Posts: 46
From: Tampa, Florida
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted 11-02-2006 04:08 PM
Steve,
The basic scheme of things is you sign a 10 year agreement with IX or whomever, they in return get paid by the film companies ( all 7 major studios are on board now) for each movie. Lets say roughly speaking the film companies give $750per film per screen, and a 10 plex gets an average of 3 new movies a week. Over the 10 year period that equals out to be 1,170,000 which is between a 250,000-600,000 profit for the leasee.
I do agree Steve on your point on how the equipments lifespan isn't going to last the 10 years.
Most independents will sign on because they are scared that once this offer runs out there is no way for them to afford digital, and I think one day the film companies will set a deadline on prints.
I am not a fan of digital fopr the main fact that a digital projector will never have the lifespan as a 35mm projector, and that in 3 years a 2k projector could be obselete.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-02-2006 05:51 PM
quote: Richard Fowler
This company is aready making $$$$ per screen, paid monthly, for advertising which they thought was a much better deal.....
...until they lose their customers (due to the advertsiements) and their advertising revenue (due to the loss of customers).
Also, why would the studios pay a virtual print fee of $750 per theatre? That's almost the cost of striking a new 35mm print. Does it not occur to them that a given print may make its way through many theatres? What about theatres that only show a "film" once or only a handful of times? It would make more sense (to me, at least) to have a "per screening" VPF rather than a "per theatre" VPF.
I'd still love to see how (or if) this will work out for venues which run film occasionally, as opposed to full-time commercial cinemas.
As always, Steve makes good points.
As for the encryption, it should be noted that it isn't necessary to crack the encryption to end up with an unencrypted digital copy of the file. After all, it has to be decrypted inside the projector and a bit of hardware hacking would probably be all that is necessary. In any case, if the encryption is as good as it should be, no one should have any problem with posting specific details about how it works. (If the encryption method sucks, then maybe it needs to be improved.) Most likely, the real weakness is in the method used for generating "random" numbers.
Edit: Does the Christie/AIX contract guarantee the exhibitor that product will be available for the DLP projectors? Or could the exhibitor end up with a long-term maintenance contract on useless boatanchors as soon as the next generation of equipment is available?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-02-2006 09:14 PM
The D-Cinema thing is a huge gamble in several aspects.
I doubt if Carmike, Rave and other circuits who are aggressively installing D-Cinema systems have given "hand-shake" agreements to these install problems. Surely they're not that irresponsible.....right?
Humor aside, the theaters will have one thing on their side: a pretty large install base of 2K projectors. By the end of 2007 around 3000 or 4000 screens (or even more than that) will be equipped with these systems. The previous generation of 1.2K systems did not have that on their side. How many of those things were installed? 200? Or less?
When Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS were battling each other, all of those formats secured their place on the 35mm film strip once they had so many theaters equipped. After so many theaters had the hardware it would have been stupid not to support them. 2 years after DTS and SDDS first appeared "quad format" 35mm prints were being sent to theaters.
Unlike the digital sound formats, the JPEG2000 movie files for D-Cinema should be able to play on a variety of D-Cinema systems. Isn't there also a DCI specification for folding down 4K content for 2K systems as well?
The biggest benefit for Carmike in all this is upgrading many sub-par theaters to a higher and consistent level of presentation quality. Nearly all their theaters will have the same model of projector and other supporting hardware. The sound racks will still be somewhat different, but not dependent on supporting a specific lossy compressed digital surround format (DTS, DD, SDDS). Of course, all of this is assuming enough people will care about the very steady, debris and scratch free images.
I still think the biggest threat against D-Cinema systems deployed by the likes of Christie/AIX and Dolby is that of home theater and eventually the Internet. Sure, I know the D-Cinema projectors have much higher end 3-chip DLP or 3-chip LCOS imagers and show video streams with 16-bit per channel "deep color" content. But people at home don't know that. They just see the DLP logo on their TV and then see the same thing at the movie theater and assume both are equal. I think it has the potential of turning into a really big marketing problem if enough is not done to differentiate the two. This marketing problem may bite the theater industry well before those 10 year contracts are set to expire.
As to the piracy thing, I don't think its much of an issue with this D-Cinema stuff. What is someone going to be able to do with a movie file over 200GB in size? Some people may be willing to download several gigs of a DVD-V movie. They're not going to pin down their Internet connection for possibly weeks just trying to download one single movie. On top of that, there isn't any standard off the shelf computer hardware that can even handle those D-Cinema bit-streams.
Perhaps 2-5 years from now when most computers have 4-core or 8-core CPUs, 20 some odd gigs of RAM and 100 terabytes of hard disc space then the high def piracy threat will be quite a bit more formidable. The people doing the encryption work currently have a valuable grace period during which they better beef up their security measures. Even still, most of that piracy is still going to occur via those dumb-assed screener discs the studios hand out to actors, critics and other industry people. That's the hole that must be plugged.
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Jarryd Beard
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 229
From: Hellertown, PA
Registered: Jul 2004
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posted 12-19-2006 07:21 PM
First, as an update, both Carmikes in State College have been upgraded to the DLP projection. Actually, they've been in place for just over a month now.
Second, and update on more news in regards to Carmike. They have contracted with Real D to license 500 screens by the end of 2007. They will have 200 screens ready by the opening of Meet the Robinsons. The story from American Digital Networks can be found here and is quoted below.
quote:
REAL D Adds Significant New Dimension to Carmike Cinemas
LOS ANGELES-(Business Wire)-December 14, 2006 - REAL D, the leader in the delivery of premier digital 3-D experiences, today announced an agreement with Carmike Cinemas, Inc. (NASDAQ:CKEC) to license 500 screens with REAL D Cinema technology. The agreement is being implemented immediately and will run through 2007, with 200 of the screens being deployed before the release of Disney's Meet the Robinsons in March 2007.
This deployment brings the total number of committed REAL D Cinema screens to 850 worldwide, continuing the rapid growth of a platform that started in November 2005 and giving REAL D the world's largest 3-D cinematic footprint. Films that have screened in REAL D cinemas around the world include Columbia Pictures' Monster House, Walt Disney Pictures' Chicken Little and the re-release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as Disney's upcoming animated feature Meet the Robinsons and Paramount's Beowulf.
"We are enthusiastic about expanding our current relationship with Real D," stated Michael W. Patrick, Carmike's Chairman, President and CEO. "The ability to bring moviegoers this revolutionary 3-D format is an exciting advance and gives us the ability to provide differentiated content. REAL D is delivering what moviegoers want and demand: quality films in unique and immersive formats."
"We are excited to finalize this agreement with Carmike and appreciate their vision regarding the future of exhibition," stated Michael V. Lewis, chairman of REAL D. "With this agreement, we are guaranteed to reach our thousandth screen in 2007."
About Carmike Cinemas
Carmike Cinemas, Inc. is a premier motion picture exhibitor in the United States with 291 theatres and 2,450 screens in 37 states. Carmike's focus for its theatre locations is small to mid-sized communities across the United States. For more information visit the website: www.carmike.com.
About REAL D
REAL D is the worldwide inventor and provider of key stereoscopic technologies used in entertainment, marketing, science and other industries. REAL D's mission-critical 3-D visualization technologies are used by organizations such as NASA, Pfizer, BMW, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, SEGA, Boeing and more. For more information, or to locate a REAL D Cinema, visit www.REALD.com.
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