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Singapore reels in digital cinema

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Singapore ,
Cinema,
Theatres

John Lui CNETAsia

Published: 20 Nov 2003 10:45 GMT

Singapore will go from zero to 21 digital screens in the coming months, as part of a government-led plan to turn the country into a regional hub for digital content.

If the plans can be implemented in time, upcoming movies such as the Russell Crowe vehicle "Master and Commander" and Disney's "Brother Bear" could be commercially screened in digital format in Singapore.

A digital theatre system is a filmless format used for screening movies. The movies are typically sent as computer files to the cinemas and kept on a server before screening on a digital projector. In addition to screening movies, digital cinemas can also screen live international events transmitted by satellite.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) estimated that the Singapore digital theatre industry will create 5,000 jobs over the next three years as demand for products such as movie file servers and networks, hosting services, movie language localisation and related media and IT services increase.

The IDA also hopes that Singapore will become a digital content clearinghouse for the region as it develops expertise in digital cinema technology.

While it is possible for Hollywood to bypass middlemen to upload the movie file directly into a cinema's server anywhere in the world, the practice is not feasible as an everyday business model, said Lim Hock Chuan, the chief executive of Singapore's Media Development Authority.

"Hollywood doesn't want to deal with a thousand cinema operators in Asia. They will want a distributor to handle licensing, payment collection and versioning," he said.

Third-largest installation
Eng Wah Organization, the second smallest of the country's five cinema operators, will add digital projection systems to its six cineplexes. Twenty of its existing 29 screens will be upgraded. A new screen to be built in an outdoor park will also feature a digital system.

Eng Wah, IDA and MDA will jointly invest over $5m (£3.2m) in the planned upgrades. Once completed, Singapore will have the largest number of digital screens in Asia outside of China, and third in the world after the US.

No deployment schedule has yet been set, said Goh Min Yen, Eng Wah's managing director, as technical issues are still being worked out with the distributors of the digital cinema system GDC Technology. She acknowledged that Eng Wah's use of digital cinema does not offer a clear competitive advantage over other operators, though it did simplify the storage, distribution and exhibition of films.

The heart of the system will be the Cineplex Central Server from US-based DSR. Each of the six cineplexes will have one server which can stream movies to several screens simultaneously. In theory, one server can stream movies to cinemas several kilometers apart over a high-speed wide area network if one existed, said Ervin Chan, a sales manager with GDC Technology.

Movies files can be brought to each server over a cabled network, satellite transmission or by a pocket-sized external hard disk. Each movie is between 40 to 80 gigabytes in size, and a typical storage area network (SAN) in a cineplex will start at a capacity of 20 terabytes, with no caps on maximum size, said Chan.

The movies files use MPEG-2 compression, encrypted with DSR's proprietary 128-bit algorithm. Decryption is done on-the-fly only during playback, to prevent illegal file copying, said Chan.

The projectors from Barco will feature the highest currently available resolution of over 2,000 horizontal and vertical lines, and feature micromirror technology from Texas Instruments, according to a Barco spokesman.

Will it take off?
Worldwide, the adoption of digital cinema has been slow. While the benefits for systems providers, studios and distributors are many -- such as easy, cheap copying and transmission and strong digital rights management -- studios and hall operators have to invest huge sums to upgrade hardware.

The numbers of movies produced in native digital formats are also very small compared traditional 35mm film reels. As of September this year, only 56 Hollywood films have been released in digital format, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter magazine.