Tag Archives: DCIP

DCIP Reaches VPF Agreement With Fox

July 25, 2008

After industrywide speculation and concern over the absence of any news about virtual print fee (VPF) agreements being signed by Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP) the company finally announced their first deal which rumor has it is with Twentieth Century Fox. The news was reported by Reuters and has not yet been made official by DCIP, however the company’s CEO, Travis Reid was quoted as saying:

“A party has signed a deal and we think it won’t be long until we have multiple studios.”

There are no details yet about the terms of the deal, nor any confirmation that it is with Fox, though during a conference call on Thursday Regal Entertainment’s CEO confirmed that a VPF agreement had been reached with at least one studio:

“We can’t disclose which studio, but we consider it to be a major milestone. It is always difficult in getting someone to be willing to be the first.”

Paramount is also rumored to be close to announcing a deal with DCIP, as is Walt Disney Studios.

DCIP was formed by North America’s three largest exhibitors - AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Regal Entertainment - to manage and finance the rollout of digital cinema equipment and technology within each circuit. With 14,000 screens between them it is easy to see why the industry eagerly awaited news that the studios had come to some form of agreement with DCIP to subsidize the cost of installing digital cinema equipment. Due to the large size of the rollout, such a deal was viewed as a bellwether for the types of VPF deals other exhibitors would be able to get. Recent VPF deals announced by other integrators such as AccessIT in the United States and XDC in Europe did little quell everyone’s anticipation over news from DCIP.

No doubt even DCIP was getting a little anxious over the lack of progress on their VPF agreements they were able to make public. The company was founded in February of 2007 by the three theater chains and had hoped to wrap up their negotiations with studios over VPFs by the end of last year. As almost anyone working in or following the industry now knows, the studios began playing hardball with integrators such as DCIP on the contractual terms of the VPF agreements, haggling over every last detail including usage fees for alternative content and the length of the deal. XDC’s VPF with Hollywood studios is reportedly only USD $850 per film, per run.

And there’s one main reason that the rollout of digital cinema has stalled at around 5,000 screens in North America (out of 37,000); rolling stock prints range from USD $1,200 to $1,500 so even with VPFs the the distributors save heaps of money, whereas exhibitors are forced to pay for expensive digital cinema equipment they claim won’t save them any money or increase their revenue. That the standards for this equipment are still being determined by SMPTE and DCI hasn’t helped matters either.

However, in 2009 Hollywood studios plan to release upwards of 11 movies in digital 3D which will require the equipment to be installed on a broader scale. Presently the number of screens equipped for digital 3D in North America hovers around 1,300, making it difficult to release two such films into the market at the same time. News of the DCIP deal may be a relief for a few studio executives have otherwise to struggle to find enough digital screens to place their 3D releases on. Studios have actually begun to push some of their 3D releases back into 2010 to make certain they will have enough screens to put them on.

The thinking within the industry is that once DCIP starts announcing VPF agreements the rollout of digital cinema should ramp up soon thereafter. Michael Lewis, chief executive of 3D systems provider RealD, told Reuters:

“When the DCIP deal drops, then digital cinema is really on its way.”

Here’s to hoping Mr. Lewis is also fortune teller.

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Posted in Digital Cinema, Integrators

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XDC Nabs Those Elusive VPF Deals - Including WB

By Patrick von Sychowski

May 23, 2008

XDC in Cannes 2008

There will be champagne rather than rose wine or Belgian beer being poured, toasted and drunk tonight in Cannes as XDC announces that they have secured VPF deals with four of the Hollywood studio, including the one that has eluded others, namely with Warner Bros. From Forbes.com:

Broadcast equipment manufacturer EVS said its unit XDC has signed agreements with Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and The Walt Disney Studios to invest up to 600 million euros in the deployment of up to 8,000 digital cinema installations in Europe.

The roll-out period under the agreement - which will see more than 65 percent of the value of projectors, servers, applications and services being co-financed — will last for a maximum of 5 years, with each digitised screen co-financed over a period of maximum 10 years.

The group also said agreements with two other studios, Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures are in a very advanced stage and are expected to close shortly.

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Posted in Digital Cinema

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Regal’s 1,500 screen deal with RealD for 3D comes with BIG caveat

By Patrick von Sychowski

May 21, 2008

Audience 3D horror Regal likes 3D and is showing it in a big way by promising to install no less than 1,500 of its screens with RealD’s technology, meaning that more than one in ten of all its auditoria would be stereoscopically enabled. But this big hangs on a bigger IF that most of the press seem to skip over. Here is how a fairly long article on the Financial Times starts of:

Regal Entertainment, one of the largest US cinema chains, has struck a deal to install new technology that will sharply lift the number of screens capable of showing 3-D films and give Hollywood studios a more profitable outlet for their new releases.

Regal has signed an agreement with RealD, which makes 3-D projection technology, to install more than 1,500 3-D screens. The deal will lift the number of 3-D screens operated by RealD to more than 3,500.

With cinemas able to charge higher ticket prices for 3-D titles, Hollywood studios are clamouring to release their films in the new technology. DreamWorks Animation will release all of its films in 3-D starting next year with Monsters vs Aliens . Walt Disney will also release 3-D films in 2009, as will Universal Pictures with James Cameron’s Avatar .

But what the FT confines to the fine print at the bottom of the article, Carolyn Giardina has the nous to highlight in the first paragraph of THR.com’s article about the deal:

Regal Entertainment Group and RealD have inked a deal to install 1,500 RealD 3-D systems in Regal theaters in the domestic market. Consummation, however, is contingent upon digital cinema deployment arrangements.

In order to have digital 3-D, a theater first requires a digital cinema installation. Digital cinema deployment deals generally rely on a virtual print fee model through which studios contribute an agreed fee per screen, per movie to offset exhibitors’ installation costs. However, many of these deals remain at an impasse.

So if DCIP does not get the VPF deal in place there will be no 1,500 RealD screens. And that is still a very big ‘if’. The $1bn+ deal that was supposed to have concluded by late 2007 now looks likely to miss the Q2 2008 deadline. As Pamela McClintock notes in Variety:

At one point, the consortium — Digital Cinema Implementation Partners — wanted all the major studios to agree. Now, it appears that the consortium is prepared to move ahead with only three of the studios aboard: Walt Disney, Paramount (which distributes DreamWorks Animation titles) and Fox. Insiders said they expect Sony and Universal to follow suit eventually, while Warner Bros. and DCIP are said to be far apart on terms.

Disney has been the pioneer in digital 3-D, although it is Katzenberg who has become the public ambassador of the fight to convert more.

This would be one studio less than even AccessIT’s second VPF deal. Once again it seems that Warner Bros is sitting this one out, have so far signed no VPF deal with either AccessIT, DCIP or Arts Alliance.

Moreover, no one is asking the question about how the 1,500 3D screens will get rolled out, particularly if it is to happen in time for the Monster/Avatar 3D movies of 2009. The preferred way to convert cinemas is a whole multiplex at a time, which is how Christie/AIX tackled Carmike, with swarms of engineers and installers settling on multiplexes in one town like locusts, finishing the job and moving on to the next one.

But 3D installs will be sprinkled a handful of screens (two or three per Regal multiplex by my estimate) in each site. So if the digital cinema and 3D install it s to go hand-in-hand then installers will have to return to convert all the non-3D digitla screens at a later point, which is neither cost effective or efficient, much like Arts Alliance is has converted CGR in France to-date. Remember that the upgrade of the entire DCIP circuit (Regal, AMC and Cineark is going to take at least three years if not longer.

Digital 3D will be a long time coming yet, it would seem.

UPDATE: Some of the best analysis comes once again from Screen Digest courtesy of analyst Charlotte Jones:

Once the DCIP model is finalised, Regal could start conversion at (previously announced) rate of about 200 screens per month. There are now just 10 months before the release of Dreamworks Animation’s first 3D effort, Monsters vs Aliens in March 2009 and assuming roll-out began next month, this would give Regal, around 2,000 basic d-cinema screens of which an unspecified proportion would be 3D-enabled by this calendar benchmark. This scenario would be on top of the 134 3D screens Regal had deployed at end first quarter 2008.
While we do not believe that 3D’s incremental production costs, are a substantial issue for the US Studios, a slower take up then the 4,170 digital 3D screens we are predicting in the US market by end 2009, could result in a reduction of the premium revenues attainable from 3D screens or a further rescheduling of titles. The deal has been reported on a revenue-sharing basis with RealD, whereby initial capital costs are lowered or removed, in return for a share of premium revenues. In this respect, maintaining higher ticket pricing for 3D screenings will be essential to this arrangement.

It looks that, as with the fate of HD DVD vs. Blu Ray, the fate of DCIP, digital cinema and digital 3D currently rests with Warner Bros.

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Posted in Digital 3D

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Korean cinema rivals unite for digital

By Patrick von Sychowski

November 13, 2007

In the first international example of digital cinema bringing together exhibitor adversaries, South Korea’s CJ-CGV and Lotte Cinema have pacted for a digital cinema deployment venture. The two cinema majors have formed a 50/50 joint venture to accelerate digital cinema deployment in a country that it already at the forefront of D-Cinema installations. According to Screen Daily:

CJ CGV and Lotte Cinema own 430 and 290 screens respectively. The two rival chains hold almost 40% of the nation’s screens, making it easier for them to negotiate with local and foreign distributors through the joint venture.

D-cinema Korea expects to select, order and test its new equipment, such as projectors and cinema servers, and to have the business up and running by the first quarter of next year. The company is starting with about $3.3m in capital and will be run jointly by co-CEOs appointed from each side.

The partners plan to make digital equipment available to theatres at a third of the cost, and transfer ownership of the equipment to theatres after 10 years.

While Variety observes that:

D-Cinema Korea will open shop by the start of 2008 and plans to finance roughly 33% of the cost of purchasing and installing digital projectors, with full ownership to be transferred to theaters after 10 years.

Distributors will be charged a virtual print fee upon the release of each title to help recoup the initial investment.

What this means is that Korea now has its own version of DCIP, which unites Regal, AMC and Cinemark in the US, and could serve a sa model for exhibitors in other countries of how to make a common cause for digital cinema.

Despite recent woes for the Korean cinema industry, the country is one of the leading countries when it comes to digital deployment, averaging as it does five per cent, which puts alongside the the likes of US, UK, Norway and Belgium. There is both a push for digital 3D and as Screen Daily noted in the article above, one of the two partners until recently had an integrated partnership for deploying digital:

Lotte Cinema previously signed a MOU with multiplex chain Cinus and leading telecom KT over a year ago. KT subsequently started a digital cinema transmitting service with Cinus while Lotte saw no other particular developments. Its partnership with CJ CGV has now effectively cancelled out the MOU.

What both articles fail to further deduce from this is that with exhibitors world wide getting smart about digital and working together to make it happen, it is another nail in the coffin for the third-party digital cinema business proposition promoted by the likes of AccessIT and Arts Alliance Media.

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AccessIT Signals Phase 2 of Digital Deployment

By Patrick von Sychowski

November 7, 2007

AccessIT logo AccessIT, the company that kick started the roll-out of digital cinema in the United States, has given details of its ‘Phase Two’ deployment plans. With the goal of the first 4,000 digital screens now in sight, the speculation had been whether they could extend the first phase to the ofte-stated aspiration of next converting a further 10,000 screens. While there are no hard specifics in the press release, there is plenty enough to suggest that it wll happen:

Further solidifying its global leadership in Digital Cinema, Access Integrated Technologies, Inc. (”AccessIT”) today announced its intent to provide up to an additional 10,000 networked Digital Cinema systems to exhibitors across the United States and Canada. The Company has reached substantial agreement with several of the major movie distributors who fully supported its initial “Phase One” deployment of close to 3,750 screens, completed last month. Agreements are structured so they may be amended to international deployment as well. AccessIT also is in active negotiations with several exhibition chains that were ready to commit to “Phase One” but were unable to participate due to timing. This “Phase Two” deployment is anticipated to begin in the first quarter of 2008 and to continue for three years. While AccessIT has not yet executed final agreements, announcements regarding studio and exhibitor signings are expected shortly.

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Posted in Digital Cinema, Integrators

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How much did AMC pay for 54 Sony 4Ks?

By Patrick von Sychowski

October 19, 2007

The tail end of ShowEast brings the announcement that AMC Theatres will install 54 of Sony’s 4K projectors in four of its new cinemas. The press release gives the details of how many projectors will go into which multiplexes and when:

Sony will provide 54 SXRD 4K digital cinema systems at new AMC theatres in Dallas (12 screens); Indianapolis (14 screens); Riverside, Calif. (16 screens); and San Diego (12 screens). Work will begin next month, with the theaters scheduled to open in December.

The theaters will feature a combination of Sony’s SRX-R210 10,000 lumen* model and the SRX-R220 18,000 lumen* unit. The systems, which were specifically designed for theater applications, will be paired with Sony’s LMT-100 Media Block servers.

“This inaugural effort with AMC Entertainment is the latest example of the exhibition and motion picture industry’s continued adoption of 4K digital cinema technology,” said John Scarcella, president of Sony Electronics’ Broadcast and Business Solutions Company.

But if you read the whole press release there is something missing. A quote from AMC. No ‘We are thrilled to be working with Sony to bring our patrons the highest quality digital….yadi…yada…’ And this tells us off that there is something unusual about this announcement and deal.

More specifically, how much did AMC pay for these projectors and on what terms were they installed?

Sony SXRD It seems strange that AMC, which is part of DCIP, should decide to suddenly install fifty odd projectors when they are presumably just months away from concluding VPF negotiations with the Hollywood studios, which will form the basis for funding the rollout in 2008. It’s also not as if there is pressure to install 4K projectors in time for an upcoming 4K film release, like there is for 2K projectors for the digital 3D version of ‘Beowulf‘ this autumn. Which leads me to guess that AMC must have got these projectors from Soy on very favorable terms. Perhaps even free. Because DCIP has already been testing the 4, so it is not as if AMC needed a beta field test. For Sony, this gives them more prestige than the single US exhibitor deployment with Muvico. They must also be hoping that this will put them in a better position for when DCIP places its order for 2008.

Having said that, good things are being said about Sony’s Theatre Management System (TMS), plus the Hollywood studios have made clear that they will not pay VPFs for equipment going into new cinemas, where no 35mm projector or print is being replaced, and these are all new sites. Still, we will have to wait for AMC’s next 4K filing to get any details on what AMC did or didn’t pay for this. Until then, any article about the AMC-Sony deployment should end with the disclaimer ‘Financial details of this transaction were not disclosed.’

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