1. Introduction

Digital cinema encompasses every aspect of the movie making process, from

production and post-production to distribution and projection. A digitally produced or

digitally converted movie can be distributed to theaters via satellite, physical media, or fiber

optic networks. The digitized movie is stored by a computer/server which "serves" it to a

digital projector for each screening of the movie. Projectors based on DLP Cinema®

technology are currently installed in over 1,195 theaters in 30 countries worldwide - and

remain the first and only commercially available digital cinema projectors.

When you see a movie digitally, you see that movie the way its creators intended you to

see it: with incredible clarity and detail. In a range of up to 35 trillion colors. And whether

you're catching that movie on opening night or months after, it will always look its best,

because digital movies are immune to the scratches, fading, pops and jitter that film is prone

to with repeated screenings.Main advantage of digital movies are that, expensive film rolls

and postprocessing expenses could be done away. Movie would be transmitted to computers

in movie theatres, hence the movie could be released in a larger number of theatres.

Digital technology has already taken over much of the home entertainment market. It

seems strange, then, that the vast majority of theatrical motion pictures are shot and

distributed on celluloid film,just like they were more than a century ago. Of course, the

technology has improved over the years, but it's still based on the same basic principles. The

reason is simple: Up until recently, nothing could come close to the image quality of

projected film. Digital cinema is simply a new approach to making and showing movies. The

basic idea is to use bits and bytes (strings of 1s and 0s) to record, transmit and replay images,

rather than using chemicals on film.

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The main advantage of digital technology (such as a HYPERLINK

"http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm" CD ) is that it can store, transmit and

retrieve a huge amount of information exactly as it was originally recorded. Analog

technology (such as an audio tape) loses information in transmission, and generally degrades

with each viewing. Digital information is also a lot more flexible than analog information. A

computer can manipulate bytes of data very easily, but it can't do much with a streaming

analog signal. It's a completely different language.

Digital cinema affects three major areas of movie-making:

Production - how the movie is actually made

Distribution - how the movie gets from the production company to movie theaters

Projection - how the theatre presents the movie.

With an $800 consumer digital camcorder, a stack of tapes, a computer and

some video-editing software, you could make a digital movie. But there are a couple of

problems with this approach. First, your image resolution won't be that great on a big movie

screen. Second, your movie will look like news footage, not a normal theatrical film.

Conventional video has a completely different look from film, and just about anybody can

tell the difference in a second. Film and video differ a lot in image clarity, depth of focus and

color range, but the biggest contrast is frame rate. Film cameras normally shoot at 24 frames

per second, while most U.S. television video cameras shoot at 30 frames per second (29.97

per second, to be exact).

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2. Why digital cinema technology come ?

2.1 Piracy & Cost Hurts Everyone

• Today piracy is hurting everyone– Films, Music, Software, Pharmaceuticals, Print,

Merchandising– any area involving branding and IPR

• The Indian Film Industry with USD 1.75 Billion in revenues loses up to 50% of its

revenues to pirates i.e. roughly USD 875 million to piracy.

2.2 Indian Cinema – The Present Scenario

• Cinema distribution and exhibition business in India carried out almost entirely on

celluloid format which leaves it vulnerable to piracy.

• Advancement in duplication technology has made piracy easy, cost effective, speedy

and difficult to prevent.

• The only present safeguard against piracy is to physically guard the prints and

stringent legal enforcement. Both measures, due to logistical reasons, are difficult to

implement.

• However, piracy is essentially a technology problem which has to be combated with

technology.

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2.3 We Cannot Fight the Pirates

• Piracy the world over has become an industry, technology is allowing it to flourish.

• Film and Music Industry are hit the hardest. Not much headway has been made in

filmed entertainment to combat piracy, despite huge efforts.

• The music industry is fighting by policing as well as by market strategies of reducing

the rates, in films this is not possible since the cost of tickets and prints is more or less

fixed.

• Today the only way to beat pirates is to kill their business model

3. How do we achieve this?

The only answer is Digital Cinema

• Digital Cinema means the transmission and delivery of films to theatres electronically

where the image is stored in a computer server and beamed onto the theatre screens.

• It uses Digital Media (fibre optics, satellite transmission, hard disks) instead of

analogue media (Prints ).

• Digital Cinema uses digital projectors instead of analogue projectors.

• Hence Digital Cinema by eliminating all physical formats checks Piracy at its roots.

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Fig: UFO Digital cinema configuration

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4. Digital Cinema – The Only Solution

• Digital Cinema curbs piracy in three ways

– Digital transmission of films to theatres eliminates “en route” content leakage

– Elimination of print cost provides an opportunity for a much wider release,

thus taking the content to the viewers before the pirates can do so

– Encrypting the content to protect the copyrights of the producers and

distributors

• Wide and economical release of movies through digital cinema is the only option to

block the pirates. Widespread release will divert the funds from the pirates back into

the cinema value chain

Fig: UFO ANTI PIRACY LOGO

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5. UFO-Anti Piracy at every stage

• The following anti piracy features of UFO Movies ensures that the content is

protected end to end.

– Firstly, conversion into D5 tapes take place at a dedicated media centre with

bio-metric access control.

– Secondly , a 192 bit AES encryption system encrypts the film, frame by frame.

– Thirdly, license to play the film is given via Digital Video Broadband Link

onto the smart cards installed in the UFO servers.

– Fourthly, transfer of content from server to projector is secured by means of a

HDCP cable.

– Lastly, a unique identification code ensures that the source of the movies

copied from the UFO theater screen can be easily identified.

6. Difference between analogue and digital:

6.1 What is analogue video?

Analogue video transmits or stores video data in a continuous wave of red green and

blue (RGB). The signal is varied using different frequencies of each colour’s wave to display

changing images at the receiver’s end. Since this format involves an unbroken transmission

of wave data. It is prone to noise (distribution). However , since this continuous stream of

data is very similar to the way we humans perceive the world our eyes receive a continuous

stream of light waves, which our brain perceives as moving images (video)-analogue video

data represents reality better.

Celluloid film onto which pictures and sound are recorded (partially digital)

Highly mechanical projectors, many moving parts

Tried and tested method used for decades

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6.2 Analog’s Disadvantages:

Distribution - expensive, slow

Film Preparation - labor intensive, error-prone

Inflexible

- Changing venues requires physically moving print

- Large lead-time for ordering prints, limited selection of low-risk films

Fig: analogue video real & projector

6.3 What is digital video?

Digital vedio is nothing more than a series of images ,all stored in digital format(ones and

zero) that is displayed in quick succession on a screen(such as a compputer monitor).

A digital vedio recorder ,for example, takes analogue signals (light waves )and

records them into a digital representation of the analogue dat. So almost all digital video is

nothing but a computer’s understanding of analogue video. There are exceptions such as in

the case of , say ,games,where there is no anologue data tobegin with ,and all the data is

created and displayed digitally.

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6.4 Advantages of digital:

Picture and sound represented digitally

Stored temporarily at theater on computer hard drive or streamed directly from

distributor

Screened with high-res digital projector

Relatively very efficient

Fig:digital projector

6.5 Which is better?(ANALOGUE ~DIGITAL)

Though there is no perceivable difference between analogue and digital video to the

human eye, digital video is preferred because of the ease with which it can be manipulated.

In order to, say, edit a video, or to store it easily digital format offers a great

advantage .you can just open up a soft ware and start editng up your digital video, or store

hundred of movies, movie clips, on your hard drive, are even make copies of your personal

videos and share them easily with your friends and family. With computers our lives doing all

this has become a no –brainer, for most.

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With analogue video , you would need to store each video on video cassette, and

making copies of the cassette would involve two video cassette recorders-one playing back

the cassette and another recording the video in real-time on to another cassette which is a

very tedious task. With digital video the same task become as easy as coping the video file to

another computer are device, are even e-mailing it to hundreds of friends and family

members. This is where digital video has the definite upper hand.

ANALOGUE DIGITAL

Distribution - expensive, slow

Film Preparation - labor intensive,

error-prone

Inflexible

- Changing venues requires

physically moving print

- Large lead-time for ordering

prints, limited selection of

low-risk films

Picture and sound represented

digitally

Stored temporarily at theater on

computer hard drive or streamed

directly from distributor

Screened with high-res digital

projector

Relatively very efficient

7. Minimum Requirements for Digital Cinema Projection

Resolution is the most visible standard. For motion picture purposes, resolution is

measured in horizontal pixel count.

High-definition video resolution is 1,920 pixels per frame, or 2K.

Resolution for high-speed film is 4,850 pixels per frame or 5K by comparison.

It appears that the studios will force a 2K standard for the United States.

The American Society for Cinematographers (ASC), told us that a group called the

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) associated with the United Nations is pushing

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for 1K as an international standard. The ASC is fighting this. We encountered mixed views on

whether 2K would be a fixed standard or the bar would be raised as the technology improves.

Given the cost of the equipment, it may be impossible to change the standard even on a

phased basis post facto. The market is likely to play a greater role.

Some basic requirements of the digital cinema:

Theater, Studio:

Its is used to displaying the cinema to audiens.

• Network: for connect to the theater projector to server system

• Server: it having the cinema to respond the authorized client request

• Camera, Display(Projector, LCD/Plasma), Audio:

these are the basic hard ware requirements of the cinema.

8. Developing an End-to-End Digital Cinema System

Digital cinema is more than just a projection system; it requires a change in technology

throughout the process. The key elements are as follows.

Telecine. The vast majority of movies are shot on origination film , although digital

special effects may be inserted throughout. The master film print is generally digitized to

create videos using a telecine. In order to produce the quality required for projection on a

wide screen, digital cinema will require some changes at the telecine process.

First, high-definition telecine must be used. Second, the telecine equipment has to

be optimized for the projection technology used. Accordingly, if two types of projection

technologies were adopted, a separate telecine system would be required for each process.

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Preparation. When a film is digitized, it creates an enormous file that must be compressed.

For example, a typical two-hour movie would result in a 1,000-gigabyte file, or 1-terabyte

file, uncompressed. Even compressed, a feature length movie could result in a 60-80 gigabyte

file resulting in significant storage requirements at the cinema. In addition to the cost of

torage, the transmission limitations must be considered. To transmit a full-length movie

uncompressed using a satellite system would take approximately 110 hours. A variety of

compression technologies are possible including MPEG-2, layered MPEG, and wavelet.

Once the file is compressed, it must also be encrypted. This step is critical to prevent a digital

file from being intercepted and distributed via the Internet and other means. There are

multiple encryption technologies that have been proposed. To limit piracy, a file would need

to be encrypted at every stage until it reached the projector.

Distribution. There are several options for delivering the digital file to the cinema. Although

there are no major technological barriers to multiple delivery channels, there are scale

dvantages in consistency. From our discussions with industry players, there seemed to be a

general consensus that fixed media should be used in the beginning. Essentially, DVDs would

be delivered to theaters using the existing delivery system. Fixed media has the advantage of

being a relatively low-cost approach, which does not require a significant change in behavior.

At a later point, the system could evolve to one in which files are transferred using T1

lines, fiber optic networks, etc. The most interesting approach involves satellite transmission,

which has benefits particularly in emerging markets. The advantage of transmitting files

whether using a secure network or satellite technology versus fixed media is that live events

could conceivably be presented using the same infrastructure. As a result, there are

incremental revenue opportunities available with this type of distribution. According to

Boeing, it would take six to eight hours to send a feature film by satellite. As this is point-to-

multipoint technology, the distribution cost would be relatively low. We were told a ballpark

figure per distribution would be $1,000, resulting in a breakeven point of 10-15 theaters. (Of

course this ignores the cost of the projectors.)

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Fig: end to end digital cinema system

Projection. Regardless of the delivery method, exhibitors will have to install storage and

other back-end technology to support digital projection. Of course, the critical technology is

the projector.

A 35mm projector currently costs about $35,000 and lasts for many years.A digital

projection system includes the projector and one or more servers. It also requires more

powerful lighting, which results in higher operating costs. Digital projectors and the related

hardware cost approximately $150,000-$200,000. In our report two years ago, we assumed

that the cost by this time would have come down significantly. In fact, there has been no

meaningful cost reduction.

The normal benefits from Moore’s law do not fully translate to display technologies, as

optics that do not scale at the same rate are involved. Furthermore, for cinema quality

projection, there is no scale. If the global screen count is only 108,000, the maximum annual

shipments are 36,000. Relative to other semiconductor applications, that is tiny.

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What type of projects are eligible for Video on Demand and Digital Cinema

Distribution funding?

2 types of services are eligible: "Video on Demand" and "Digital Cinema Distribution".

Video on Demand (VoD): Service enabling individuals to select audiovisual works from

a central server for viewing on a remote screen by streaming and/or downloading.

Digital Cinema Distribution (DCD): Digital delivery (to an acceptable commercial

standard) of content to cinemas for theatrical exploitation (via hard disc, satellite,

online…).

9. DLP(digital light processing):

In the digital cinema system the DLP can perform main role .now we discuss about the

DLP(digital light processing). And how it can be used with in the digital cinema.

The images projected onto the screen from the projector, are formed from the projection

source using a reflective technology called Digital Light Processing (DLP).

The DLP processing board uses a digital micro-mirror device or DMD; which acts as a

light switch.

Inside each DMD chip are many tiny mirrors, which correspond to 1 pixel of light in the

projected image. The tiny mirrors tilt towards or away from the light source thousands of

times a second to produce up to 1024 shades of grey.

In a 3-chip DLP system, white light is passed through a prism that divides the light into

red, green and blue. Each chip is dedicated to a primary color. The red, green and blue

reflections from the 3 chips are combined and passed through the lens to project an image

made up of more than 35 trillion colors.

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Fig: three chip DLP system

10. HOW DOES DLP CINEMA® TECHNOLOGY WORK?

1. A digital projector based on DLP Cinema® technology transfers the digitized image

file onto three separate optical semiconductors known as DMD chips. Each of these

chips is dedicated to one primary color – red, green, or blue.  A DLP Cinema chip

contains a rectangular array of over one million microscopic mirrors.

2. 2. Light from the projector's lamp is reflected off the mirrors and is combined in

different proportions of red, green and blue, as controlled by the image file, to create

an array of different colored pixels that make up the projected image. Think of the

DMD’s as the colored cards held up by an audience in a sports arena to create a giant

image. Each person holds up a single colored card, yet when combined, these

thousands of cards create a picture. If the card colors are changed, the picture changes

too.

3. 3. Each micromirror tilts either toward or away from the light source thousands of

times per second to reflect the movie onto the screen. These images are sequentially

projected onto the screen, recreating the movie in front of you with perfect clarity and

a range of more than 35 trillion colors.

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Fig: MULTIPROJECTOR EDGE-BALANCED SYSTEM

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11. HOW ARE DIGITAL COPIES OF MOVIES DELIVERED TO A

THEATRE?

A digital copy of a movie can be delivered to a theatre on an external hard drive, using a

fibre network or via satellite delivery. 

12. DIGITAL CINEMA STANDARDS

In July 2005, after years of evaluating and testing different technologies, the studio

members of Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI), a joint venture of Disney, Fox, MGM,

Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Brothers Studios, published

and released to the industry voluntary technical specifications for Digital Cinema. These

specifications Provide a guideline for technology providers ensuring the system’s components

are Interoperable and provide a high level of security for the content.

13. THE BUSINESS OF DIGITAL CINEMA

In the Fall of 2005, Access Integrated Technologies, Inc. (“AccessIT”) (NASDAQ:

AIXD), after successfully negotiating with major Hollywood Studios, contracted Christie

Digital Systems for the supply of an integrated DCI-compliant Digital Cinema system. 

AccessIT created their wholly owned subsidiary, Christie/AIX, an entity responsible for

executing an innovative business plan and administrator for the first practical Digital Cinema

rollout in the world.  The plan satisfies the diverse concerns of movie studios and exhibitors

by standardizing with DCI compliant content format, delivery and presentation.

Christie/AIX serves as the intermediary between content owners (major studios and

independent distributors) who pay the virtual print fees (VPF) for each movie projected on a

Christie/AIX Digital Cinema system, and exhibitors, who are responsible for the installation

costs, software licensing fees and 10-year maintenance contract.  

Christie/AIX provides exhibitors with a full range of DCI compliant hardware and

software including Christie’s latest generation 2K resolution 3-Chip DLP Cinema® projector

and all hardware, media players and central server equipment.

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fig:Access Integrated Technologies,

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14. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF DIGITAL CINEMA?

– Enhanced, pristine razor sharp image quality

– Image does not degrade with repeat viewings – 2K resolution (2048 x 1080) at

every screening

– Movies can be shown on more screens and at higher frequency

– Lower cost and more convenient distribution

– Reduced shipping costs

– Economic savings free up resources to afford more digital movie copies,

increasing variety of cinema programming

– More efficient management of theatre operations

– Ability to play alternative content (i.e. live sports broadcasts, a Broadway show)

– Ability to use cinema downtime for alternative purposes (i.e. events, seminars,

conference venues)

Digital Cinema offers real advantages for movie patrons who expect a superior

entertainment experience. With Digital Cinema, the viewing experience is significantly

enhanced with the projection of pristine, razor-sharp, 2K resolution images at every

screening.  With digital content, the risk of film scratches and image distortion is a thing of

the past.  In addition, with DLP Cinema projection and distribution, movies can be shown on

more screens and at higher frequency providing movie-goers ample opportunity to watch

movies of their choice.

From the exhibition stand-point, Digital Cinema offers a high-quality image, unaffected

by repeated showings.  The digital copy at the 1000th viewing is as good as the movie’s

premiere – as digital files do not get scratched or degrade with each viewing.  In terms of

cost, Digital Cinema offers significant savings in distribution with the elimination of the need

to make, copy, and ship bulky reels of 35mm film.  The cost savings in distribution frees up

resources to afford more digital movie copies increasing the variety of cinema

programming.  

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15. Conclusion

Digital cinema the transmission and delivery of films to theaters electronically where

the images stored in a computer severs and beamed on to the theater screens. It uses digital

media like fiber optics, satellite transmission, hard disks instead of analogue media like

prints. Digital cinema uses digital projectors instead of analogue projectors.

Hence digital cinema eliminating all physical formats checks piracy at its roots that will

help to the cinema producers and distributors and also it will reduce the cost of film making.

So the digital cinema is one of the best transmission for getting more profits to the developer

also users. It mainly says that “technology made piracy - technology will kill piracy”.

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References

www.dcinema.fhg.de

www. wikipedia.com

[1] http://www.allthingsmike.homestead.com/files/filmstrip.jpg

[2] http://www.boxoffice.com/boxoffice_scr/movie_business_list.asp? NID=8174

[3] “Digital Cinema – A Slow Revolution”. Dettmer, R. IEEE Review.

[4] http://www.castify.net/solutions/digitalcinema.htm

[6] http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/wp/Clark/D-Cinema_ Distribution/2AW-

8109.pdf

[7] http://www.geocities.com/jonesjohn2000/filmstrip1.jpg

[8] http://www.coralcliffscinema8.com/images/aboutus_projector.jpg

[9] http://www.dlp.com

[10] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4724335.stm

[11] http://cinemaprojectors.co.uk

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