DCDC is lowering their prices.

[Frank Cox]

They can save a ton of money on warehouse space and staff since they won't need all of the infrastructure for doing physical duplication and shipping. They'll shut down all of the warehouses and do everything from Burbank.

The only physical thing left to ship will be one-sheets and they'll probably eliminate that by telling everyone to buy a digital display and download the graphic.

[Mike Blakesley]

One sheets are already kind of spotty.... I've had to print my own for several movies in the last year. I don't think it'll be all that long till they get out of the one-sheet business. We might be back to buying them from some NSS-type outfit again.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Theaters may be better off installing a couple of the vertical monitors made for that purpose. I think the electronic versions of those one-sheets are going to be easier to get.

[James Gardiner]

This poor rural quality of broadband. I am of the opinion it will largely get better. The Internet is as important as POWER these days. If you don't have power, you don't have a town or community. Same can basically now be said for decent internet connectivity. If a region does not have decent internet, its likely a question that a cinema should be located in such a underserved community in the first place. Yes, I know, a little mean, but such is business.


On Digital posters. Yes. I find it strange there is not more collaboration between distributors on this topic too. They all have their own internally developed media portals..

I actually made a point of this a while back at ISDCF suggesting the people from the studios in the room consider building standard around making digital posters and social marketing graphics available. Its a complete mess if you want to source OFFICIAL artwork for a specific region. Most small cinemas I know just download what's readily available on the internet, TMDB/IMDB wise. This is not 'an approved path' and local classifications are not included etc.
But as its so much easier, its a common path.

I was hoping my making an issue about this at ISDCF would make it up the mountain to those who actually have power to more in the right direction.. But unfortunately I don't think it helped any.

I have had some ideas on automatic digital signage and online social network advertising implementations too. And I created a prototype digital poster solution for my cinemas.. But I have other fish to fry.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

We can get up to 2 gig here at home. But I have no need for that much speed. Even the 1 gig I have is overkill except for big up or downloads. Also, the 2 gig is not available in.rural areas yet...

[James Gardiner]

For small cinemas 50mbit is all you need.
For multiplexes, 100mbit is all you need. (You could get away with 50 is you plan in advance)

All with unlimited traffic costs of course.

In general, you can do a film per day with 50. How many cinemas open more then 7 films in a week....

Such bandwidth is pretty much the bare minimum these days as to service an average home with a family. 50mbit is minimum, (Multiple people watching streaming, working from home)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Can't get anything reliable here that's less than 400 MB. Copper internet is pretty much a thing of the past in this area of TN. Everything is fiber now. The Infrastructure Bill that passed shoulg change that, but over about a ten year period.

[Jon Dent]

Stepping back from the minutiae of satellite vs. wired Internet for delivery, the takeaway from this for me is that the major content distributors want to to phase out content delivery by means of shipping physical media (CRU drives, in most cases).

Even the latest DCI equipment seems to reflect this ideal. The IMS3000 units we just installed don't even have the option to install a CRU dock like our old SX-2000A. We have to hook it up to the CRU adapter and run an eSata cable to the server.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

eSATA is 6 Gbps, so more or less the same as a hard drive. The first eSATA jack I saw and actually used was on the GDC SX-3000. One could ingest pretty quickly that way. The reason they left out the cru ingest slot is because of lack of space and content ingestion was meant to be done over the theater network via the TMS. I installed close to 50 SX-3000 and almost all content, except at one single screen site was moved via the tms.

[Leo Enticknap]

CRU do make a 1RU rack mount reader that connects to an IMS via USB3 or eSATA. This is what we'd supply for a single screen, arthouse, or screening room situation where there is no TMS.

[Mike Blakesley]

Theaters may be better off installing a couple of the vertical monitors made for that purpose. I think the electronic versions of those one-sheets are going to be easier to get.

I'm hoping somebody comes out with a "broadcast" setup so you can just hang the monitors on the walls and send onesheets to each one rather than having to run a shit-pot full of cables everywhere.

[Frank Cox]

I looked into those things a bit and there's an outfit that does exactly that but you have to pay for a monthly subscription on top of buying the display unit.

I gather that the display unit has built-in wifi and you can update your presentation from anywhere through a webpage hosted by the supplier.

You can be in your head office or your lakeside cabin and update the displays at any or all of your locations right across the world without getting out of your chair.

https://nummax.com/en/

All for a pretty substantial price, though.

Hopefully someone will start selling a reasonably priced solution for small movie theatres at some point but I haven't found it yet.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

CRU do make a 1RU rack mount reader that connects to an IMS via USB3 or eSATA. This is what we'd supply for a single screen, arthouse, or screening room situation where there is no TMS.

Unfortunately they didn't when I put in the first SX-3000's. All they had back then were the singles you could put on a shelf. And I only used a few of those. Everyone moves and ingests content via their TMS all the DCDC catch servers also feed the TMS.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I'm hoping somebody comes out with a "broadcast" setup so you can just hang the monitors on the walls and send onesheets to each one rather than having to run a shit-pot full of cables everywhere.

Just load em in via USB...

[Mike Blakesley]

Just load em in via USB...

Well much as I hate to admit it..... "Old School Mike" never thought of that!