DCI Compliant

[rahmani]

Hello,

This topic not a hundred percent related to DCP-o-matic but will cover it generally.
As far as I know DCI compliant cinema servers have included software and special hardware for playing DCPs.
What should be the situation for a cinema that is using a PC and a software such as NeoDCP (or DCP-O-Matic may be in the future)? Are there any cinemas that use non-DCI compliant servers?
Are there any standards for using a software and a PC as a cinema server?
Do the 6 major companies, Hollywood and other international film distributors are willing to give such cinemas KDM for playing their films?


Solomon

[Carsten]

I can only speak for germany. Yes, there are some very small cinemas, and some festivals, running on software players that are not DCI compliant. Many would not call them cinemas, they are usually non-profit organizations, small film clubs with just a few dozend seats, or short term operations (like festivals). I'd say, in germany maybe 50-100 screens out of 4600 total operate that way. Not all of them play DCPs, some only DVD/Bluray, some 16/35mm.

No, they don't get KDMs from the major studios. However, there are still a few distributors issueing KDMs for them, and quite a few, even some very successful arthouse movies, come unencrypted.

This may be very different for other countries. Are you surprised to hear that NeoDCP player is developed in a country with one of the lowest dci conversion rates?

I don't know any standard for sub-dci systems. India, with one of the largest domestic cinema markets, established the term E-Cinema country wide in the early days of dcinema. These were usually MPEG2 compatible players. But I guess most screens in India today will also use full dci compliant equipment. A large part of the audience there may be very poor, but they are attending their popular movies in very large numbers, so I guess, in the long run, they should be able to buy DCI equipment.

What country are you from?



- Carsten

[rahmani]

Thank you for your useful comment.
As I understood if anyone want to play Hollywood films DCI-Compliant server is a must, am I right?
Most of cinemas here in Iran uses MPEG2 non-DCI compliant cinema servers and call them E-cinema. I think this type of HW&SW combination systems and related projectors need more cost for maintenance especially projectors lifetime but, D-Cinema systems(DCI-Compliant) need less maintenance cost because of their heavy duty structure and longer MTBF.

Solomon

[Carsten]

It depends on local distribution habits, as well as relations of local distributors to their major partners in the US. If there is no solid DCI compliant infrastructure, they can not sell a product if they insist on strict DCI compliance. So, as a result, they may relax their policies to allow for less secure distribution, but that depends on the individual distributor and studio. I wouldn't expect Disney to allow non-DCI distribution in Iran. They don't allow non-DCI distribution in europe and the US, that for sure. They do allow to play BluRay/DVD here once these media are in public circulation.

- Carsten

[gunnar]

If i may jump into this conversation.
No, the big hollywood studios do not give KDM for non-dci compliant system.
They always ask for of cource the server cert of the screen and a serial and stuff like that. The company deluxe that make kdm's for those big studios have list of every certificate cinema and screens in each country.

The main reason for this is that a pc computer with a dcp player software dose not garantee any quality.
The projector might be crap, the sound system some bad stereo system.

In a certificate cinema screen server and the projectior is "married" so the server and projector needs to have relationship in order to work.

So encrypted dcp from hollywood studio will never be usable on pc with a dcp player software.