Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Anyone knows DIGITAL CINEMA UNITED?

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Posted by Juan Jose Garcia Calvo (Member # 1702) on 01-01-2017, 04:28 PM:

Anyone know DIGITAL CINEMA UNITED ?
We just received an email from this company requesting our digital server data, contact adress...
But they are not identifying themselves.
Do we trust in this company? who are these people?
Thanks
(happy new year to everybody)

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 01-01-2017, 05:03 PM:

Well, ask them ;-)

This happens to us occasionally. Most of the time these are mastering/service companies having received an order by a distributor to issue a KDM for a future showing. They may have not been dealing with your cinema before, or they are a newcomer in that service segment and need to collect their screen database before they can start to work. In general, there is nothing secret about your server serials, but I would still ask them for a specific reason why they contacted you.

- Carsten

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-01-2017, 07:34 PM:

Hi Juan-
Feliz Ano to you too!
(one of only about 3 Spanish phrases I know)

I'd be suspicious of any company contacting me 'cold' and asking for
your server info, even though their intentions are probably harmless.

Usually, if it's some entity needing to generate a 'key' they at least
mention somewhere in the e-mail what they need it for.

As Carston suggests, e-mailing them back for more info wouldn't hurt.

As I do a lot of 'festival' work, I recognize the name of the company,
mostly when dealing with "foreign" (from a USA point of view) DCP's

Assuming it's the same company, they are a fairly large, international
DCP mastering and distribution company, with offices all over the globe.

You you can see their website HERE !

- - but I'd still shoot them an e-mail & confirm what they want your info for.

Posted by Juan Jose Garcia Calvo (Member # 1702) on 01-02-2017, 05:58 AM:

Thanks you for your replies, Carsten and Jim.

Yes, I visited their webpage and it seem to be a large company.
Of course, before posting here I sent them an email asking what facilities they want to update as they only tell me in their first email that they wanted to UPDATE their records about our cinema theatre.
I explained in my email that now we have 2 cinema theatres working, and I asked him what studios are they working for.
They ONLY answered me that "please, send us all the servers data of all our theatres" to update their records.

That's when I decided to write here my question.
I think I need to send them a new email...
They are doing things bad.
If they don't have no data of our servers (as I suspect), they don't need to lie telling me that they want to update their records.
If they really have any data of our servers, they had to tell me that "we have these data of your servers... Are they correct?

Regards!!
PD: JIM, your keyboard are incomplete. You missed the "ñ" [Smile]

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 01-02-2017, 08:06 AM:

Yes, their answer shows some inappropriate impatience. I would tell them you are not sharing technical information with them unless they quote a reason/order. It may be though, that the person requesting this information does not know about that reason himself. He may have been told to gather this information by someone else.

We had been asked by Gofilex to send our server data very shortly before we expected to receive a KDM and DCP for a showing though (but in that case, we had been doing business with Gofilex before). So make sure you are not actually missing a KDM...

Which email address did they use for the first contact, a generic one for your cinema, or one that has been used previously for KDM transmission?

I remember that when we went digital, there was an existing base of KDM service providers (and there has been nearly no change since then). Everyone (including us, of course) was eager to forward our server data to them to get going with our first showings. About a year later, a new company entered the market, and they requested all german cinemas to send them their data, listed within their own Excel sheet. I remember quite a few complaints by cinema operators why they should spend time to help a newcomer in that area to establish their business assets. It settled down quickly, though. One of the issues was that every company sends their own sheets and you have to manually fill out all the fields again and again. Would they all use the same sheet, you would simply resend an email and your done. I also remember that some of the complaints were based on the way their request was phrased. One should not leave it to an apprentice or 'the IT guy' to make a first business contact...

Seems that FLM-x got stuck somewhere...

- Carsten

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 01-02-2017, 10:47 AM:

They are legit. I have gotten several movies (mostly Bollywood) through them.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-02-2017, 01:07 PM:

What really pisses me off is when distributors, especially tiny, mom-and-pop ones, send you a great long "digital cinema readiness form" (or called something bullshitty like that), which takes half an hour to complete and is asking for a whole slew of information that they don't need to issue the KDM and which is none of their business.

Because we're an arthouse chain that books DCPs from many different distributors - they don't all come from Deluxe Technicolor - we're on the receiving end of this bureaucracy quite frequently, though Digital Cinema United is a new one on me.

All they actually need is the media block cert, whether or not you're wired for 7.1 (if the encrypted DCP exists in 5.1 and 7.1 versions) and if you're 3-D capable or not.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 01-02-2017, 01:46 PM:

I usually just send the PEM files, and don't fill any form for them. Each PEM file is saved with the audi number in the title.