Consortium of European Companies Designs Complete Solution for Digital Cinema within Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA) Project

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A Consortium of European companies has announced the creation of a Digital Cinema Design Program within the Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA) Project.  For a period of 2 years, European companies and institutions will collaborate to design a complete solution for digital cinema, including post-production, transmission, theater system and projection as well as a demonstrator.

The Film Industry has finally accepted the concept of Digital Cinema.
The principle of the digital distribution and display of feature films, requiring over time the replacement of over 115,000 existing 35mm projectors, is now widely regarded as inevitable and after over 10 years of research the DLP TM projection technology developed by Texas Instruments has finally met the demanding picture display standards.

Today, work to define digital production, distribution and display standards also starts in Europe.  For a period of 2 years, European companies will collaborate to design a complete solution for digital cinema, amongst which Barco, EVS, Octalis and Icuna (Belgium), Kinoton (Germany), The Computer Film Company and the University of Derby (UK), Sublime Software (Finland), INRIA (France), Philips and Stage Accompany (The Netherlands).

The program is situated within ITEA, an ambitious EUREKA Project focusing on stimulating and supporting the development of software technology competences for usage by European industry.  It will define the architecture of a Digital cinema infrastructure, starting from the content translation from the analog world to the digital world, and ending with a theater screen projected digital movie. All the procedures will rely on conventional existing or upcoming standards related to the fact that the ITEA Project wants to achieve an open solution.

Further, it will investigate the methods to transform movie master into a digital movie and the protocols for secure transport of content between production and theaters. This program will also be dealing with the implementation of image compression, pre-processing techniques and conditional access methods. It will also include the development of a robust and secure server system for storing, processing, internal distribution and management of large digital film files and sound information.

Finally, the companies in the consortium will build a demonstrator to validate the digital cinema concept and contribution defined concepts and formats to standard bodies.

For more information on the companies in the consortium, please do contact:

• BARCO, Keith Morris, keith.morris@barco.com , http://www.barco.com/
• EVS, The Server Company, Jean-François Nivart, jf.nivart@evs-cinema.com , b.michel@evs-cinema.com , http://www.evs-cinema.com/
• Icuna, Jean-François Quintin, jean-francois.quintin@icuna.be , http://www.icuna.com/
• INRIA, Jacques Levy Vehel, Jacques.Levy_Vehel@inria.fr , http://www.inria.fr/
• Kinoton, Dipl.-Ing. Christoph Dobler, welcome@kinoton.de , http://www.kinoton.de/
• Octalis, Jean-Marc Boucqueau, Boucqueau@octalis.com ,  http://www.octalis.com/
• Philips, Ronald Maandonks, r.maandonks@crypto.philips.com , http://www.philips.com/
• Stage Accompany, Tom Back, Back@StageAccompany.com , http://www.stageaccompany.com/ 
• Sublime Software, Petteri Pulkkinen, petteri@sublimesoftware.com , http://www.sublimesoftware.com/
• The Computer Film Company, Wolfgang Lempp, wolfgang.lempp@fs-cfc.co.uk , http://www.cfc.co.uk/
• The University of Derby, Lindsay W. MacDonald, L.W.MacDonald@colour.derby.ac.uk , www.colour.derby.ac.uk/colour