Cinesend

[Scott Norwood]

Is that the advantage? It saves on shipping charges?

[Frank Cox]

That's the advantage from my point of view. I can't speak for anyone else, but receiving a movie this way costs me effectively nothing versus about $50 to Purolator when they bring a hard drive to my door.

[Justin d'Entremont]

We got one either sometimes late last year or early this year. Took me all of 10min to setup. Aside from screwing it into the rack, it's literally just power and ethernet.

That being said, we've yet to receive a single movie on it. I guess being shut down for the last 7 months doesn't help.

Does anyone know who they have signed on for distributors? I was told Mongrel for sure, and that "they were in late stage discussions with other distributors".

The biggest advantage for us is not having to physically go pick up the DCPs at the shipping depot. Because there's no one at the theatre during the daytime business hours, our carrier won't even put the package on the truck anymore, so we have to drive out (15min each way) to the shipping depot. I suppose it would also help us in the winter, as we've had a number of *very* close calls that the interline truck with our DCP on it would be late because of a huge storm and only arrive an hour or two before showtime. As opposed to that, our internet is rock solid fiber, we're currently paying for 150Mbps up and down, and we could go up to 1Gbps for another $10 a month or so.

[Greg Routenburg]

Recently we've received the following titles via CineSend

2 Hearts - Cineplex
100% Wolf - Cineplex
Come Play - Universal
Save Yourselves - Level Film
Meeting The Beatles in India - Kinosmith

It's been a while since we've seen anything from Mongrel but I know they delivered a few things via CineSend pre-covid. We've also received a couple of titles from VVS earlier this year.

[Markus Lemm]

We got like the 8th one in Canada. Had it for over a year now. Works great and you can pick, from a limited list, trailers online and send it to the machine.
We also have a QubeWire box that we got 2 years ago. Same deal but different company.

We got Percy on it this week. That one is Mongreal.

The machine didn't cost us a thing and there is no monthly cost. Distributors pay for sending, priced per gigabyte, I think.

[Frank Cox]

It's my understanding that Cinesend charges you if they send you trailers. Features are free.

At least that's what I was told when I got it.

[James Waite]

We received the equipment and were in the process of installing it when we shut down. We had some issues getting being on a University Campus so on a subnet. Their IT is a tad overprotective.It was mainly going to be used for the Bollywood movies. We used to play 3 or 4 for rentals each weekend. The renters were quite happy about not having to ferry drives around. They were doing interesting things like calling me wednedsay saying they had a movie to be ingested that then had to be driven to a city an hour away. I never quite figured out why they didn't just make more hard drives. Cinesend said anyone could use it but I wondered what the catch was i.e. why the studios weren't already using a version of this.

[Markus Lemm]

There is no cost to the user. We have downloaded trailers and features but have never been charged.

The website says they will start charging on January 1st 2021 for the trailer download service.

I'm guessing the feature delivery will stay free since it is initiated by the distributor. We just get an email saying that a new download has started.

[Greg Routenburg]

Cinesend said anyone could use it but I wondered what the catch was i.e. why the studios weren't already using a version of this.

The way I understand it, the reason that most of the studios weren't starting to transition over to an online delivery platform was the logistics of coordinating multiple delivery methods. Back in the film days, the studio was very hands off when it came to how the prints were delivered. They paid the film service for that and washed their hands of it. In Canada for example, everything went to CCDI or one of it's predecessors and they managed all of the various delivery routes, bus bookings, couriers and whatever else was used to deliver things. When things transitioned over to digital, they basically kept the same old system only with hard drives instead of film. That way the studios didn't need to change anything on their end with managing the bookings. From what I've been told, many of their systems aren't sophisticated enough to handle the logistics that are required to manage content delivery with a split between online and physical delivery during the transition. CineSend stepped up and offered to no only handle the online portion but also to bridge the gap with hard drive shipping where their servers were not yet rolled out. As they ramp up their facilities and improve their capacity, they are bringing on more and more clients.

Markus is correct on the cost structure. Feature content is paid for by the entity that initiates the transfer. It remains free for the cinemas. I personally don't know who will be willing to pay $80/mo for trailer delivery unless the trailmix drives go the way of the dodo.

[Mike Blakesley]

So, can a person sign up for Cinesend and still get the trailmix drives?

I'm not sure if I'd want to do Cinesend just yet, nothing bad about the process but it's the internet expense here. Our local provider is ridiculously expensive ($85 for 50mb, which we all know would really be more like 40, so I would have to bump up to the 100mb, which is $125.) At that rate, if we were having to pay for trailers too, it would actually cost us more to go with Cinesend.

I'm still holding out hope for DCDC but not holding my breath.

[Frank Cox]

The way it's been working for me so far is that when stuff is available on Cinesend it gets sent that way, and movies that are not available on Cinesend and trailers come on a hard drive from CCDI, the Canadian division of Deluxe/Technicolor.

Cinesend still seems to just be getting off the ground. I think I've got either four or five movies from them so far, but pace seems to be picking up now.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Many of my customers use DCDC and never have problems, but singles and twins can not get it, because DCDC says they don't have enough downloads in a year to make any $$$. So I wonder if Cinesend might work better for singles and twins? Which if it does, I will be letting a few locations know about it

Wow, flashy

I wonder why all "modern" equipment comes with those intriguing blue leds. What was wrong with red and green and not burning your retina in the process of flickering at you?

Exactly! The human eye is least sensitive to blue spectrum and it only makes up about 12% of the light we see. The blue LED that bothered me the most was the blue one on the NEC projectors. It apparently also bothered some customers enough to cause them to put white splicing tape over them. Flashing green woulda been better....

[Frank Cox]

I have a gadget (one of their digital boxes with some kind of special firmware) from the local cable TV company in my living room that I give them readings off of once in while when they phone to check on issues. (I also get free service, so it's not a bad deal.)

The blue power-on led is so bright even during the day that it bothers my bird. I put a piece of black electrical tape over it.

[Mike Blakesley]

Many of my customers use DCDC and never have problems, but singles and twins can not get it, because DCDC says they don't have enough downloads in a year to make any $$$.

The dopiest part of that is, they could charge up to $40 per movie (which is what we pay now for Technicolor hard drive service) and then maybe they'd make money, but they won't even consider coming up with a "program" for smaller venues. I would happily pay the same rate as Technicolor charges, just for the convenience.

You would think in this day and age with theaters closing left and right (or not operating at all) they would take whatever they can get.

[Leo Enticknap]

I've seen both Cinesend and EclairPlay boxes in single screen theaters. My impression is that it's mainly arthouse titles that are distributed through these systems.