A Kodak moment in digital cinema

Post, Oct, 2004 by Claudia Kienzle

HOLLYWOOD -- "At Kodak, we're taking a long-term view of digital cinema and addressing the needs of the marketplace both today and in the future," says Bob Gibbons, director of marketing, communications for Kodak Digital Cinema. "We believe the industry will slowly transition to digital cinema projection of feature films, but only after mutually beneficial business models have been developed. And we plan to have solutions for that application."

But Kodak is also offering a market-ready solution today: the Kodak Digital Cinema Pre-Show Solution. "By introducing this comprehensive, integrated solution, we will help exhibitors transition from a slides-based pre-show to a more sophisticated, entertaining digital pre-show rich with full-motion cinema commercials, and fresh, innovative content produced with the moviegoer in mind," says Gibbons. "And by deploying our digital pre-show solution, we are in fact laying the ground work with a powerful, scalable architecture which can be upgraded to support the digital cinema feature presentation business."

While digital cinema is still a technology waiting in the wings for its big entrance, Gibbons says the digital pre-show business is viable today, and exhibitors are enthusiastic about it because it brings them a new revenue stream, new advertisers to tap and more entertaining content to show before the movie.

The Kodak Digital Cinema Pre-Show solution includes four components: network-based hardware; content management and distribution; services including on-site support and remote monitoring and diagnostics; and intelligent, proprietary software. The solution uses Dell servers and digital projectors from companies like Christie and Sanyo. Exhibitors are linked to KDCS (Kodak Digital Cinema Services in Hollywood) and content packages sent from KDCS via DSL dovetail with their ticketing and theater automation systems. KDCS obtains all advertising from national advertising coordinators among other sources, and then packages them with other pre-show content. Afterwards, the Kodak system automatically verifies that each venue showed the ads as planned.

"The Cinema Advertising Council, an industry trade group, did a study of cinema advertising and found that in 2003 cinema ad spending was up 37 percent to $356 million," reports Gibbons. "However, that's only one-quarter of one percent of total advertising spending, so there's obvious room for growth. In fact, they predicted that over the next five years, cinema advertising will grow at 23 percent compounded annually to more than $1 billion.

"Of the nation's 30,000 movie screens, 10,000 will likely have digital pre-show systems by the end of 2004, including those already in use by a number of movie chains," concludes Gibbons. "Of that number, Kodak expects to have 1,300 digital pre-show systems installed, and the content Kodak delivers for its Ad Supplier partners is going to be seen by more than 1.5 million moviegoers per month."