THE FOREFRONT OF DIGITAL CINEMA IN THE USA

The World Created by the Convergence

of IT and CDS

Dr. Jordan Isailovic

Principal, JRI Technology

Content Management Forum

Tokyo, Japan

5-6 September 2000

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW

BENEFITS

CONTENT

UNIFIED STANDARDS

PROJECTORS

1-2-3 TESTING: TESTED AND OFFERED BUSINESS MODELS

WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO MAKE DIGITAL CINEMA HAPPEN?

CONCLUSIONS

Acknowledgment

References

APPENDIX

DC Theater Locations

MPA: GOALS FOR DIGITAL CINEMA

INTRODUCTION

Digital Cinema is only 444 days old!

In June 1999, Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace from Lucas Film and 20^th Century Fox made its debut as the first major motion picture to be theatrically exhibited as digital cinema. The “film” has never itself seen a photo development laboratory. Instead, it has been digitally recorded and stored on disk drives that have been brought to theaters, where it was digitally projected as well.

Samuel Goldwin, co-founder of MGM: “Hollywood in the Television Age”, 1948. Single print delivery: one of his initiatives called for the development of large-screen theater television so that a single “print” could be carried by leased wires to thousands of theaters simultaneously.

Studios: MGM, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount/Viacom, Columbia/Sony, and Dream Works.

The environment: “Even if they were right, they must be wrong!”

Due to recent advances in technology, digital delivery of feature films now has potential to reduce costs, increase revenue and enhance the movie going experience. One problem clouding the future of digital (IP) distribution of movies is security. The MPAA estimates the film industry loses more than $2 billion to movie piracy each year. Despite recent developments in encryption technology, producers are still uneasy about using digital distribution for their works.

OVERVIEW

Digital Cinema: a system capable of delivering full motion pictures, trailers, advertisements and other audio/visual “cinema-quality” programs to theaters throughout the world using digital technology.

The Digital Cinema systems use a “store-and-forward” concept to distribute motion pictures which have been digitized, compressed, encrypted and delivered to theaters using either physical media distribution (DVD, etc.) or electronic transmission methods, such as via cable or via satellite multicast methods.

Authorized theaters receive the digitized programs and store them in local storage while still encrypted and compressed. At each showing, the digitized information is retrieved from the local storage, decrypted, decompressed and displayed using cinema-quality projectors.

The Digital Cinema systems encompass many advanced technologies.

Figure 1 shows the flow of data through a digital cinema (d-cinema) system.

BENEFITS

For Studios: End-to-end cryptographic encryption, the ability to dynamically address the market, etc. Less obvious economic benefits are brought about with the ability to simultaneously release a movie internationally; simultaneous release makes piracy more difficult by reducing the time from the first screening to going to video.

For Independent Filmmakers: Low cost to produce and new ways to distribute.

For Distributors: No prints, reduced labor costs and greater efficiency. Reduced risk for the motion picture studios and distributors; electronic distribution allows quick adjustment to market demands without the expense of printing copies at approximately $1,200 - $1,500 each. However, the overall cost of film prints for a motion picture might be $1 million, compared to the cost of typical advertising campaign of perhaps $50 million. But watching the pennies and letting the pounds take care of themselves is a very sound accounting principle. The price for a 6- to 12-disc DVD-ROM pack used for digital cinema distribution is $500 per projector and there are software locks encoded into each DVD-ROM pack to prevent multiple projectors from sharing the same digital cinema files.

For a large release (“The Mummy”, “Gladiator”, etc.) typically 2500 or 3000 prints are made and they cost anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 per print. That could be a cost saving of $4 to $7 million, not even counting the trailer that goes along with it.

For Exhibitors: Easier operator’s jobs: no more film buildup, tear-down, projector threading and repairing. Movies may be shown at any number of screens at a moment’s notice. New revenue sources - digital projectors may be used for pay per view events, interactive entertainment and corporate presentations; promotion, e-commerce and targeted advertising; distance learning, video games. Opportunities for theater owners to open their facilities to new corporate and consumer events.

For Movie Audiences: High quality motion picture at every showing. No more film degradation such as scratches, burns and splices; stable image without projector jitter.

CONTENT

The Broadcast and IT industries have followed very different paths to meet the challenges set by an increasingly competitive content production industry. In the television world, solutions have been based on proprietary technologies that limit the capacity for multi-vendor integration but meet the stringent requirements imposed by a highly demanding professional environment. Meanwhile, the IT world has moved towards open architectures based on low cost generic hardware with significant progress in the use of object-oriented paradigms. Also, in IT you see new technologies emerge, but it looks you never get rid of old ones.

Although the migration to digital television facilitates the convergence of these two paths, it also brings new challenges by creating an enormous demand for content in electronic format. Success in this business will depend upon partnership.

Content producers must define new program concepts together with efficient working methods to deliver them. System vendors must provide appropriate and cost effective underlying technologies. Video and audio alone are no longer enough - supporting information (metadata) has to be linked intimately to the content. A well-defined common metadata set, including copyrights attributes is necessary.

UNIFIED STANDARDS

Film-based movie production and exhibition is about 100 years old and therefore very mature in technology and established operational practices. The basic unified standard for all of film with optical track, and the flexibility within the standard about aspect ratios, etc., has been crucial for movies’ success. The example of different digital sound formats installed in theaters is a painful reminder of the result. Standardization is probably the biggest thing preventing Hollywood from moving forward in the Digital Cinema direction. Standards are critical in this. They are not a maybe. They are a must.

This changing world calls for people from different domains to work together and merge their knowledge and experience in the definition of new, open standards. It is already possible to anticipate IT technologies powerful enough to manage the volumes of information produced in a entertainment and broadcast environment. Standard networks and low cost computing will shortly be fundamental and ubiquitous components of the modern studio infrastructure.

SMPTE’s Committee on Digital Cinema Technology:

(DC28) Standards Subcommittees

DC28.1 Steering Group/Systems Liaison

DC28.2 Mastering

DC28.3 Compression

DC28.4 Conditional Access/Encryption

DC28.5 Transport/Delivery Systems

DC28.6 Audio

DC28.7 Theater Systems

DC28.8 Projection

Fig. 2 DC Mastering Model

Fig. 3 DC28 Functional block diagram

MPEG: Digital Cinema Profile

MPEG, a working group in ISO/IEC, has produced three important standards (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4), and is still working on the largely completed MPEG-4 standard, enhancing its functionality and on the MPEG-7 Content Description standard. In June 2000 MPEG has started its latest work item MPEG-21 “Multimedia Framework”. In March 2000 an ad-hoc group was formed to study Digital Cinema applications and define a set of requirements. A requirements document has been drafted and MPEG now expects to issue in late October 2000 a Call for Proposals for technologies suitable to Digital Cinema applications, including compression for archival and theatre distributions purposes. The archive is meant to be a master from which all other formats, e.g. for theatre distribution and DVD release, are derived, and which calls for mathematically lossless compression. For theatre distribution higher compression rates are expected since compression is only required to be visually lossless. Images are considered visually lossless when they are indistinguishable to the human eye from their originals in typical theatre viewing conditions. Such compression technology shall deal with frame rates of 24fps and higher, as it is also intended to support transmission of live events. Responses to the Call are expected to be due by February 1, 2001, followed by subjective evaluation of the proposals later during that month. This effort may lead to a new MPEG standard dedicated to Digital Cinema applications. Completion may be as early as end of 2001.

In the past few years MPEG already has been active in the field of high quality compression for high resolution images. Amendment 3 to the MPEG-4 standard Part 2 (Visual), to be published in March 2001, defines Studio Profiles that will match the needs for professional television applications.

Possible model for dcinema:

1) Movies are captured, edited, etc.:

A) In the same way that they are now. They are then converted to digital in a format that has at least 8 million pixels per frame.

B) Electronically, than digitized.

2) Preferably during this conversion, the frames are being losslessly compressed by an MPEG 2/4 process that is made lossless by the use of lossless residuals. MLP, or Meridian Lossles Packing, and Run Length Encoding are examples of this type of compression. The losslessly compressed files are then archived for future use.

It should be noted that this losslessly compressed file becomes the representation of the movie's intellectual property.

3) When the movie is to be distributed, the archive is converted into a lossy MPEG 2/4 file. The resolution is at least 8 million pixels per frame and there is no time base conversion. The movie will be displayed at 24 frames per second.

4) There are approximately 17-20 ancillary products that are usually derived from each movie. These may be video at QCIF. Presently, the masters for each of these are manually created in analog format at great expense.

Some of ancillary markets are:

· HDTV: 1080I - 50 Hz, 60 Hz

720p - 50 Hz, 60 Hz

· Standard Definition TV (STV): 50 Hz, 60 Hz

Analog: NTSC, PAL, SECAM

· Other formats:

Packaged Goods (Watchman, etc.)

Re-edit for special uses (In-flight entertainment, for example)

Just a thought: generate the compressed files for these lower resolution services directly from the archived files. One advantage of this is that the much smaller ancillary file can be stored on its own medium. This would allow video on demand for example without needing access to the terabyte master files.

Some of needs and issues:

The imagery is equivalent to or better than 35 mm film when distributed digitally.

Standardization for the delivery format.

The security of a release print.

The interface to the projector.

The qualities of the image on the screen; resolution, texture, smear, bit depth, color, brightness, motion, etc.

PROJECTORS

Infocom 2000, Anaheim, California, USA: Projection Shoot-Out

DLP Dominates

The industry dominance that Texas Instrument’s Digital Light Processing technology has shown in the past two years continue. The TI appears to be rapidly overtaking the video projector industry. There exists, at present, only one size and type of micromirror chip for each basic resolution class, so projectors that use these chips can be expected to exhibit less image variation. Digital Cinema chip is an improved version of the micromirror chip.

Some manufacturers had chosen to maximize brightness and contrast at the expense of gray scale linearity; others took the opposite path. The enhanced-contrast is good for colorful images, but tend to make fine text look unpleasantly plugged, as anti-aliasing zones around letterforms are clamped to black or white. The opposite is true for the reduced contrast. The present contrast ratios exceed 1000:1, and up to 10,000:1 are claimed.

A new “active optics” display system that uses sub-pixel image jitter to produce an effective 2048 x 1536 display resolution from an XGA-class projector, was shown at Infocom 2000.

Some of the projector related issues:

1 Security

2 Content

3 Automation/Control

4 Display Attributes

5 Colorimetry

6 Reliability when compared to conventional film projectors

1-2-3 TESTING: TESTED AND OFFERED BUSINESS MODELS

There are 37,000 screens in the USA, and estimated 100,000 worldwide.

Digital cinema is a revolution in the way entertainment content will be captured, delivered and consumed. As a business concept, digital cinema may have far reaching implications for technology developers, film producers and distributors and theatrical exhibitors; traditional business models have the potential to be transformed.

To justify the sweeping changes the entertainment industry requires a compelling value proposition.

Accelerate time-to-market; broaden and diversify the businesses.

Additional benefits may include long term uniform image quality, increased security and reliability, the ability to dynamically address the market, and the opportunity to capture revenue from non-traditional programming.

Motion pictures today are made available in multiple formats for various territories. The process by which the studios prepare these various versions is called mastering. Different versions are frequently created for each medium including 35 mm film, VHS, DVD, broadcast television, HDTV and now, digital cinema.

To master the digital cinema version: film scanner (at the present - data-scanning at several seconds per frame)and color correction system - to convert the movie to a digital format are required. The color correction operator, known as a colorist, has an enormous range of control over the color and density of the images. This work is normally supervised by the movie’s cinematographer or another person who has good knowledge of the intended look of the picture. TI DLP Cinema projector can be used as a visual reference for the colorist in the mastering suite. The transfers are compared to the 35 mm answer print projected on a traditional film projector. A typical process performed after the film transfer is the removal of white and black dirt and scratches from the film images. Uncompressed audio and video can be stored onto a D6 media recorder. The picture data can be processed through a digital restoration system (DRS) to remove any dirt that the film may have picked up. Then the QuVIS QuBit server can be used to encode - in real time, the picture and audio of the completed master into a digital cinema file. QuBit uses a 12-bit proprietary wavelet encoding/decoding technology.

- “Perfect storm”: 63 GB

- “Titan A.E.” (Fox) - 80 min: 42 GB (with network speeds of 45 Mb/s securely transferred in 130 minutes)

“Titan A. E.”: 20^th Century Fox’s animated sci-fi adventure.

Current theater playback systems are HD based; a disk recorder is ultimately more reliable than a tape based system. RAID level 3 is also used.

The system for digital cinema distribution requires build-in scalability and end-to-end security.

And now: show me the money!

Lukas Film: In the case Star Wars Episode 1, four theaters were chosen, two in Los Angeles and two in New Jersey near New York City. A theater in each city was equipped with a Hughes-JVC model 12K light valve projector, sponsored by CineComm Digital Cinema Corporation, and the other theater in each city was equipped with a Texas Instruments. Since then JVC has discontinued the model 12K in favor of a newly developed digital light valve which is not in production yet.

The digital cinema release was also planned as a test of the post-production techniques required to get the finished film onto a digital disk array for playback in each theater. It is not uncommon for a film laboratory to receive approval on the answer print - the film print which reflects the director’s and cinematographer’s choices of density and color - only 2 weeks before the movie must be in the theaters. Less then one month was allotted for the entire post-production process for Star Wars, from the first viewing of the answer print to the shipping of the disk arrays to the theaters.

Disney Pictures: releases have been executed as technology demonstrations of the techniques and equipment required to make credible film-like images. All the Disney sites are in partnership with Texas Instrument and use a prototype DLP projector. The movies have been transferred and distributed in about 2 weeks.

Technicolor Digital Cinema and QualComm

On June 15, 2000 Technicolor Digital Cinema, Inc. (Technicolor) and QUALCOMM Incorporated announced the formation of a joint venture that will provide open, end-to-end distribution technology and support services for the delivery of digital cinema to theaters worldwide.

The new venture - Technicolor Digital Cinema, LLC - will work with the motion picture industry as a technology enabler and service provider while supporting open standards for the digital delivery of movies and the existing studio-to-theater business model.

The current program of field demonstrations sponsored by Texas Instruments, Technicolor, several major studios (Disney, etc.)and participating exhibitors - is designed to show the industry and the movie-going public the benefits of digital cinema technology. The audience gets a better picture which is rock solid, free of dirt, scratches, and degradation; the theater operator can learn about and influence the eventual digital presentation system; the studio can develop the production expertise to distribute a digital feature - and the creative has more tools to control the final look of the movie, ensuring a consistent presentation every time it is shown.

Today, the Digital Cinema Field Demonstration Program encompasses thirty-one screens and sixteen different exhibitors in ten countries around the world (Appendix).

The Cisco, Qwest, etc. (Texas Instruments, Barco, QuVIS, Sigma Design, Fox): the team deployed a secure content distribution network to transport the digital motion picture over Qwest’s native IP broadband network from Fox’s production facility in Los Angeles and Qwest’s Cyber Center in Burbank, California, to the theater at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cisco-Qwest: store-and-forward architecture for media on demand using the Qwest Fiber Optic Network; a virtual private network - VPN, using Internet technology. A high-speed fiber network backbone has the capability to distribute files to thousands of theaters simultaneously.

n an integrated firewall and hardware triple-DES real-time encryption co-located with each content cache.

n 62 Mb/s to DLP system

First, “Titan A. E.” was transferred from an Interpositive, which is the first positive image protection print struck from the original camera negatives onto D-6 tape in the 24p format. A Philips Sprint DataCine high-resolution film scanner is used to record the film on a Philips DCR 6024 Voodoo Media Recorder.

Security network service provider (AndAction):

Global digital delivery of feature films, interactive entertainment and live events

Remote management of content, venue operations and scheduling

Continuous monitoring for reliability and security

Digital Electronic Cinema Inc. (DECI) Plan

DECI planes to provide the movie industry with an end-to-end, turnkey service to provide an all digital solution for Digital Cinema:

n The displayed quality: better than current 35 mm film in all respects.

n The cost: less than $50,000 per screen.

n The security: so robust that the probability of unauthorized access is negligible.

n Film to digital conversion and archiving at up to 12 million pixels per frame.

n Display will be at up to 8 million pixels per frame.

For each of the major subsystems DECI planes to provide a menu so that the owner of the content can select the parameters for the ultimate display of their intellectual property.

Sight and Sound: Internet delivery.

AtomFilm: a two year old startup; lets consumers download and store short subjects by independent filmmakers from its web site for free. Formed the business partnerships with @Home, HBO, Infoseek, Warner Bros. Online, Real Com, and dozens of other media companies.

You can put your short film on the web site ifilm.com (iFilm Network).

User generated content: Eveo, startup in trials with Packet Video, provides people with software to edit their own films and lets them upload the results to its Web site. Download is free.

InterActual: (Add value to the movie experience - via Web links) A DVD content is seamlessly integrated with the worldwide web; software enables users to control and display both traditional web pages and DVD Video. DVD disc with the InterActual PCFriendly Video Browser can be played in a normal home theater system. When the same disc is placed into a personal computer system, the Video Browser will automatically launch to take advantage of the increased power and flexibility of the underlying computer platform. Games, interactive screenplays, (Internet-based) updateable biographies and other features are some of the available enhancements. The audience can also be connected in a “virtual theater” events that combine real-time chat while simultaneously watching a synchronized DVD Video presentation. The Video Browser comes free on wide variety of Hollywood movies of the most popular DVDs, including The Matrix, Walt Disney’s Tarzan, The Abyss, American Pie, Mission to Mars, Stuart Little, American Beauty, Independence Day and many others.

WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO MAKE DIGITAL CINEMA HAPPEN?

National Association of Theater Owners (NATO): What’s the benefit, what is this good for, and why is the industry doing it? Film works pretty well! That is, popcorns sell pretty well.

Does the new media meet the needs of the creative group? They are the ones that produce the stories, the ones that use this medium as a way to tell a story for the audience.

“Blair Witch Project”: the low budget film did fairly well in the theaters because people simply wanted to see the story.

Number of North American theaters have offered digital presentation of films including “An Ideal Husband”, “Life is Beautiful”, “Tarzan”, “Toy Story 2”, “Bicentennial Man”, “Dinosaur”, “Fantasia 2000”, “Perfect Storm”, etc.

Copyright issues; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 outlaws tampering and removal of copy protection information.

DC in USA: whose story do you wont to hear?

Pay per bit. (Which bit: compressed or decompressed?)

Other Economic Factors

Screens can be used for other live applications such as sporting events, concerts, cultural events, and business presentations. The cinema complex can then be tuned for maximum usage even during periods of traditionally low attendance, such as during the daytime on weekdays.

New and extended advertising opportunities are created. Trailers and electronic billboards can be changed according to the time of day, the type of movie, and the demographic group in attendance. The lower running costs of electronic cinema make it viable to establish cinemas in less populated areas.

How to protect the material from being copied in the digital domain? Unlike a set-top box, it is possible to design an electronic projector utilizing a closed loop encryption system. This allows the signal to be monitored and encrypted right up to the optical transducer at the projector. Any tampering of the playback system can initiate a shutdown of the projector or server. Screening times can be controlled and monitored to ensure that the projector is not taken offside. Digital mastering material can be encrypted using e-commerce encryption techniques and distributed over secure channels. Playback and projector systems can incorporate both digital and imperceptible visual watermarking techniques to allow traceability of pirated material.

Picture Quality Enhancements

So what are the improvements of digitally mastered material over that of traditional film stock? Digital material does not degrade, scratch, nor gather dirt. Its colors are consistent from one print to the next. It also removes “hypnotic” flicker and stops the audience getting seasick from film weave.

Spatial Resolution

Temporal Resolution

Contrast

Colorimetry

CONCLUSIONS

Technological advancements have begun that will change the way we master and display theatrical features. With these advancements come some challenges as well.

Digital Cinema: it is a system and it is a business.

The real question is not the technology, but a business issue.

New dialog between technical, entertainment and other specialists is created.

Digital Cinema is intended to enhance the Cinema Theater experience not degrade and cheapen or replace it.

Digital cinema technology facilitates much more than the timely delivery of movies, movie trailers and in-theater advertising to theaters. With the power to link moviegoers to one another and to movie creators in real time, digital cinema can create personalized relationships with entertainment audiences as never before.

For digital cinema to meet the demanding requirements of the entertainment industry and moviegoers, it must provide reliable, scaleable and secure delivery of a superior theatrical experience.

Security: as close as possible to impossible to break the encryption.

Webcasting - the practice of transmitting movies and other video over the Internet - is here to stay.

Digital Cinema will happen in phases and over time; suspense goes digital.

Note: we are not recreating reality; we are creating an experience for people in a cinema theater. Filmmaking is really a storytelling experience.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the following people for their valuable technical and business discussions regarding Digital Cinema in the USA:

Rob Hammel, Executive VP, Digital Technologies Development, Technicolor

Michael Sterling, Director of Advanced Technologies, Technicolor

Linda Carpenter, VP Business Development, Entertainment and Media, Qwest Communication

Header Rose, Sr. Mngr. Of Product Marketing for Video Internet Services, Cisco Systems

Dr. Donald Mead, CTO, Digital Electronic Cinema Inc.

Jerry Pearce, Senior VP of Technology, Universal Studios

Bob Lambert, Senior VP, Corporate New Technology and Development, Disney

Glenn Kennel, Program Manager-Digital Cinema, Kodak

Dave Schnelle, VP Digital Cinema, Lucas Film (THX)

C. Bradley Hunt, Sr. VP, CTO, MPAA

Al Barton, General Manager Engineering, Sony Cinema Products Corporation

References

P. D. Lubell: “A coming attraction: D-cinema”; IEEE Spectrum, March 2000, pp. 72-78.

D. Schnuelle: “D-cinema recording & distribution”; Sigraph 2000.

“Digital cinema: delivered in Internet style”; Qwest white paper, June 2000.

Christensen B. H., K. N. Jenkins, and P. A. Weiss: “HDTV and Electronic Cinema - Making the Link”; SMPTE Journal, Part I/July 2000, Vol. 109, No. 7, pp. 554-558.

Contact: Dr. Jordan Isailovic, Principal, JRI Technology

E-mail: jisailovic@fullerton.com

Web site: www.advancedinteractive.com/jordan

APPENDIX

DC Theater Locations

(Outside of the USA)

Country Circuit Cinema
Germany UCI UCI Kinowelt Zoo Palast Berlin
Germany UCI UCI Kinowelt Dusseldorf
Germany Independent Cinedom, Koln
Japan AMC AMC Tokyo Disneyland
Korea Independent Seoul Cinema Town
Mexico Cinemex Mundo E, Tlanepantla, Mexico City
Spain Kinepolis Kinepolis Ciudad de la Imagen, Madrid
Spain UCI Cinesa Diagonal, Barcelona
Belgium Kinepolis Kinepolis, Brussels
France Gaumont Gaumont Aquaboulevard, Paris
Great Britain Odeon Odeon Leicester Square, London
Great Britain Warner Village Warner Village Finchley Road, London
Great Britain UCI UCI Trafford Centre, Manchester
Japan Toho Nichigeki Plaza, Tokyo

MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION

GOALS FOR DIGITAL CINEMA

August 31, 2000

The member companies of the Motion Picture Association believe that the introduction of digital cinema represents the greatest opportunity for enhancing the theatrical film experience since the introduction of sound and the advent of color. The conversion from photographic film distribution and display to an all-digital system has the potential of providing real benefits to theater audiences, theater owners, filmmakers, and feature film distributors. But in order for these benefits to be fully realized, digital cinema must be defined, standardized, and implemented in a way that ensures that the benefits accrue to all stakeholders.

The MPA member companies have been involved in public demonstrations of prototype digital cinema systems. We have also held meetings with equipment manufacturers, service suppliers, theater owners, and the creative community to better understand the views of others concerning the implementation of digital cinema. The MPA and its member companies have also participated in the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) Digital Cinema DC28 engineering study groups in the preparation of their reports on considerations in the standardization of digital cinema. Through these activities and the dialogue with other stakeholders, we have developed a list of ten goals that we believe are critical to the successful implementation of a digital cinema system that provides real benefits to all stakeholders. These goals consist of the following:

1. ENHANCED THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE - The introduction of digital cinema must be used by the motion picture industry as an opportunity to significantly enhance the theatrical film experience and thus bring real benefits to theater audiences.

2. QUALITY - The picture and sound quality of digital cinema should represent as accurately as possible the creative intent of the filmmaker. To that end, its quality must exceed the quality of a projected 35mm “answer print” shown under optimum studio screening theater conditions. Any image compression that is used should be visually lossless.

3. WORLDWIDE COMPATIBILITY - The system should be based around global standards so that content can be distributed and played anywhere in the world as can be done today with a 35mm film print.

4. OPEN STANDARDS - The components and technologies used should be based on open standards that foster competition amongst multiple vendors of equipment and services.

5. INTEROPERABLE - Each of the components of the system should be built around clearly defined standards and interfaces that insure interoperability between different equipment.

6. EXTENSIBLE - The hardware used in the system should be easily upgraded as advances in technology are made. This is especially important in evolving to higher quality levels.

7. SINGLE INVENTORY – Once a consensus on digital cinema standards is reached and implemented, upgrades to the system should be designed so that a single inventory of content can be distributed and compatibly played on all equipment installations.

8. TRANSPORT – The system should accommodate a variety of secure content transport mechanisms, including electronic as well as a physical media delivery.

9. SECURE CONTENT PROTECTION – The system must include a highly secure, end-to-end, conditional access content protection system, including digital rights management and content watermarking, because of the serious harm associated with the theft of digital content at this stage of its distribution life cycle. Playback devices must use on-line authentication with the decrypted content files never accessible in the clear.

10. REASONABLE COST - The system standards and mastering format(s) should be chosen so that the capital equipment and operational costs are reasonable. All required technology licenses should be available on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

In addition to documenting these goals, the MPA member companies are preparing a document that more specifically outlines a consensus view of the System and Performance Requirements for Digital Cinema. This document will be posted at a later date on the MPA digital cinema web site located at http://www.mpaa.org/dcinema. Comments on these documents can be directed to the Motion Picture Association’s Office of Technology by sending e-mail to: dcinema@mpaa.org.