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Topic: satellite distribution for subrun

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-15-2011 07:55 AM

Monte--agreed in principle, but I'm sure that there would be plenty of error-correction facilities built into the transmission mechanism. Ideally, the system would be smart enough to recognize a corrupted file and "phone home" to TES (or whereever) so that they would know to send the movie on a physical medium if/when the theatre is booked for it.

Sunspots aside, satellite transmission is reliable enough to be used every day for television news and network feeds. I'm not sure how this works now (is it all digital at this point, or is C-band still around?), but it is not exactly a new or untested technology.

Agreed with the comment that this will only be useful for wide releases at the national release date. UPS/Fedex are reasonably efficient data transport mechanisms, even if the latency is high.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 12-16-2011 01:41 PM

This satellite system, I can see, would mainly benefit the "big box" chains and their gazillion screens under one roof.

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Frank Cox
Film God

Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011

posted 12-16-2011 02:27 PM

I sent an inquiry to the email address on the flyer the day that I received it. I asked them for what they would charge me on an ongoing basis for use of the system, and how it would work for a theatre like mine that doesn't play many movies on the break.

I haven't received any reply yet.

On the other hand, I have just been hung for my movie tonight: I'm supposed to be playing Tower Heist. The hard drive arrived on last night's bus, so after my show was over I started ingesting it. It got to 45% and said "exception".

End of the line.

The replacement drive won't arrive until late tonight, so my theatre will be closed today.

I blame this on someone's (I don't know who) insistence on doing everything at the last minute. When a situation like this arises, there is absolutely no time to deal with it. I see no reason why they can't send stuff out on Monday or Tuesday instead of waiting until Wednesday so I won't get it until Thursday night.

Maybe the satellite distribution thing will solve this kind of problem.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-16-2011 03:07 PM

I'm surprised you get them that late. We usually get ours on Tuesday or Wednesday. The Chipmunks drive actually showed up on Monday this week.

Could it be the transportation they're using is slower? Our incoming drives usually come UPS overnight.

I do think they will make this system available to everybody, if not right away at least eventually. Not having to ship drives would definitely be in their interest. They could save $ on all the drives and the shipping cases, not to mention the labor saved on having to track all of that stuff. If the thing was only going to be available to the "big boys" I'd think they would write letters or make calls, rather than putting a flyer in with every drive.

Anyway - just tell everyone the "film didn't arrive." (I never call them drives -- they're still film to me!)

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Frank Cox
Film God

Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011

posted 12-16-2011 03:59 PM

I'm really looking forward to getting some definite information about the satellite distribution but, again, nobody has bothered to reply to my inquiry yet. However, I suspect that after sending that flyer out everyone and his brother's dog is jumping on them to get the facts so I suppose patience is a virtue and all that.

As to when the drives actually arrive, it really varies. The drives come either on the bus or on one of three different couriers. Courier packages usually show up on Tuesday or Wednesday, but lately stuff that comes on the bus hasn't been arriving until Thursday night.

Having said that, my movie for next week (Arthur Christmas) came in the same bus shipment with the Tower Heist drive that didn't work, so it's here in lots of time.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 12-16-2011 04:14 PM

From a business model, it only makes sense for them to try and do the larger complexes first. However it is my understanding the ultimate goal is to have darn near everyone on it at some point.

Frank - why could you not borrow a drive from another theater? Was there nobody anywhere around playing that movie in digital?

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Frank Cox
Film God

Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011

posted 12-16-2011 04:44 PM

My theatre is currently one of only two digital cinemas on this side of the province. The other one is a weekends-only community-owned theatre in a very small town.

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 12-16-2011 08:08 PM

Don't know wether this would have solved your issue - but a friend just had a similiar case with a hard drive that would repeatedly stop half way through the ingest.

He was, however, able to copy the content to his local computer without any errors. Then ingesting over FTP to the Doremi worked fine and the DCP played flawlessly. Strange, but he was lucky he could play the title on the same day...

- Carsten

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