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Exhibitor News

Black Screen Alert~! InterOp Losing Life Support

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Long Live InterOp

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The engineers contributing to SMPTE, and the studios who contributed to DCI, came up with enough elements to create a secure and beautiful D-Cinema environment. The same studios financed the equipment qualification standards and partially financed equipment purchases for many exhibitors. These exhibitors agreed to buy this qualified equipment and use it in a way that somewhat assured that copyrights and quality-better-than-film would be typical on screens world-wide.

Fortunately, there were written and unwritten agreements which allowed the simple DCinema origins of MPEG and a fairly loose mechanism of security keys to transition to the full on (and just recently completed) versions of standards, specifications and practices known as SMPTE Compliant Digital Cinema, with SMPTE Compliant DCPs and Security and screen fulls of other ingredients. These transitional agreements are known as InterOp.

Unfortunately, InterOp worked well enough to be added to…and added to…and added to…

For example, the simplest multimedia tools use metadata to describe computer needed info and human interface info within the songs or movies that we get to and from iTunes and Hulu and Netflix. Workers who had to get equipment and people working together in the InterOp world had to come up with an interim…maybe one year or so to live…Naming Convention. It wasn’t useful for computers at all, and cumbersome for humans at best and kept getting added to without increasing the number of characters since some old equipment only had so many display characters…kinda like computers in the 60’s. There were (and are, since years later it is still in use) dozens of ways for it to go wrong, beginning with the fact that some studios chose to ignore it when it gets in the way (according to the logic at their end of the string) while projectionists might miss some nuance that is needed for logic at their end of the string.

What happened to adding metadata like modern sciences do, and which everyone knows eventually will be needed? There are other panics with higher priority. It sits partly formed, probably until it becomes a keystone item needed for some other important development.

There are other examples of InterOp and loose de facto ‘standards’ living beyond their time, the most garish being what is hopelessly called 3D.

Instead of using valuable engineering time to progress the computer to computer interface and give exhibitors a fighting chance at perfection, engineers have had to shoehorn one feature after another into the InterOp structure. It is done with the best intentions, of course. It begins with, “My customers were asking for this now, not at some point in the SMPTE-Compliant future.” It ends with, “I have to do this because my competitor is bragging about how they can do this at no extra cost even though it violates the spirit and the essence of every standard.”

There are too many examples to mention ranging from forensics and audio mapping. Specifics aren’t as important as the fact that the entire industry has floated out far enough from land that some see letters in the water, and some seem to think that they spell H – E – R – E    B – E    D – R – A – G – O – N – S

DCinema Dragons don’t breathe fire. They are light suckers. They cause Dark Screens. Coming to theaters and drive-ins near you.

Why?

Many reasons, partly centered around the effects of software upgrades. Because the upgrade from InterOp to SMPTE-Compliant software is not a simple ‘add a feature or two’ software upgrade. At the best of times, you just never know what you will be causing when you hit that ‘Upgrade’ button. Did the software writer anticipate every single parameter of combinations of hardware and software that is in your situation?

There just are some odds that you come out of the hospital feeling worse than how you went in (look up HAI). Anyone with a computer has had software upgrades that worked for thousands of others, but did not work for them (look up: damn, not again.) There is probably some inverse squared proportionality involved as well. Getting closer to a deadline quadruples the odds of failure.

So, don’t change~! Jeez. That is sooo obvious. Which is what many do. Don’t get the first generation of anything, including upgrades. Especially during summer when all the big movies are playing.

But a horizon event approaches. Some InterOp juggling just won’t work for some combinations of . There are an amalgam of changes coming though, prompted by the teams of Jackson and Cameron. It might be easy to ignore the 60 frames per second requirement of a Cameron release (famous for pushing deadlines forward as he is), but The Hobbit will probably not be delayed. 48 frames per second, stereoscopic 3D. Will it work in the InterOp world? And what other changes will be made

Why 48fps? Phil Oatley, the post group head of technology from Park Road Post (Mr. Jackson’s facility in New Zealand) who spoke at the SMPTE/NAB DCinema Days last April said that they choose 48 because they didn’t know if equipment and exhibitors could change to 60fps in time and in significant numbers. As it turns out, all server and projector manufacturers have announced 48 and 60 fps capability. Sony even put a price on it…$3,000…which they can more easily do for their 13,000 users as they have always used an internal media block in their system.

In this case, Sony has something like the Apple advantage: They control the server, the media block and the projector so the odds are higher of getting a smooth transition. And, they have gotten DCI Compliance (at one moment of software version time…does HFR cause enough of a technology disruption that they need to re-certify?)

A TI-based projector with an SD-HDI interface will be a lot more complicated. An IMB (internal media block) needs purchasing and inserting, which isn’t a cheap investment. It is dependent upon TI-code and code from the projector manufacturer as well as code from the server all working together. How different is the server, which will have had its graphics-serving guts ripped out? …will that need a new cert? Check the DCI site for Compliance passed equipment.

But we have gotten off point. Back a few years ago you could sign a VPF deal and promise that you would use DCI-Compliant equipment and run with the latest SMPTE specs and recommended practices. At the time there wasn’t one piece of gear through the compliance procedures. And since you know that there is no SMPTE Police checking your screen for the required 48 candela/square meter luminance standard, you didn’t feel bad breaking the luminance number when showing 3D, a number that approached moonlight-equivalence at the sides of the theater and barely reached 10cd/m2 in the center. (For info on the light fall off from silver screens, see: 23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?)

But the history of the studios has been to look the other way until there is a technology that fulfills the DCI requirement. When Doremi proved they could do JPEG as the standard required, MPEG suppliers were given notice. When laser light engines can provide 3D at 48 cd/m2 (14 foot-lamberts), will the studios insist that passive 3D systems with their horrid high gain silver screens are no longer allowed (as was done in France recently? See: The Death of Silver Screens~! Vive la France)

We’ll see, but this doesn’t have anything to do with HFR. HFR is outside the DCI specs. It falls into the ‘no less than’ zone, similar to the color primaries. Laser suppliers can pick primaries outside the capabilities of xenon if that is financially and politically worthwhile, just as long as they don’t chose primaries inside the DCI/SMPTE limits.

So what does HFR and SMPTE compliance have to do with each other? Only that they are two locomotives that are running on two separate but not parallel lines. There is no firm deadline for SMPTE compliant DCPs, and no one is saying that InterOp compliant DCPs have a limited life. In fact, the studios expect that DCI equipment will play future SMPTE-compliant DCPs as well as what will become ‘legacy’ InterOp DCPs.

But something, at some time, is going to bulge the balloon of InterOp to the point that going SMPTE-Compliant is the logical move. Engineers at the manufacturers are just going to say, “I can’t play this game anymore. We were promised SMPTE would be the container that fit everything, I did the work, I will InterOp no more.”

There is rumor that this will happen soon. There is a particular setup that is rubbing against the InterOp balloon. Exhibitors are saying, “We don’t want to change until the summer season is over.” Will everything play nice together if only one condition is changed in a system? Possibly. How can you increase your odds?

Go to the ISDCF site that lists all the latest software/firmware versions for the equipment in the field. See to it that you have the latest. That will increase the odds. ISDCF Current Versions

Another thing you can do is prepare a database listing all of your equipment at each projection position, all of the software and firmware versions and all the serial numbers, and leave a field where you can download your .pem file from each piece of gear. Save this and get ready for a note from your distribution center asking for this info.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way
– in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens – Tale of Two Cities

Exhibitor News

Black Screen Alert~! InterOp Losing Life Support

Leave a comment

Long Live InterOp

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The engineers contributing to SMPTE, and the studios who contributed to DCI, came up with enough elements to create a secure and beautiful D-Cinema environment. The same studios financed the equipment qualification standards and partially financed equipment purchases for many exhibitors. These exhibitors agreed to buy this qualified equipment and use it in a way that somewhat assured that copyrights and quality-better-than-film would be typical on screens world-wide.

Fortunately, there were written and unwritten agreements which allowed the simple DCinema origins of MPEG and a fairly loose mechanism of security keys to transition to the full on (and just recently completed) versions of standards, specifications and practices known as SMPTE Compliant Digital Cinema, with SMPTE Compliant DCPs and Security and screen fulls of other ingredients. These transitional agreements are known as InterOp.

Unfortunately, InterOp worked well enough to be added to…and added to…and added to…

For example, the simplest multimedia tools use metadata to describe computer needed info and human interface info within the songs or movies that we get to and from iTunes and Hulu and Netflix. Workers who had to get equipment and people working together in the InterOp world had to come up with an interim…maybe one year or so to live…Naming Convention. It wasn’t useful for computers at all, and cumbersome for humans at best and kept getting added to without increasing the number of characters since some old equipment only had so many display characters…kinda like computers in the 60’s. There were (and are, since years later it is still in use) dozens of ways for it to go wrong, beginning with the fact that some studios chose to ignore it when it gets in the way (according to the logic at their end of the string) while projectionists might miss some nuance that is needed for logic at their end of the string.

What happened to adding metadata like modern sciences do, and which everyone knows eventually will be needed? There are other panics with higher priority. It sits partly formed, probably until it becomes a keystone item needed for some other important development.

There are other examples of InterOp and loose de facto ‘standards’ living beyond their time, the most garish being what is hopelessly called 3D.

Instead of using valuable engineering time to progress the computer to computer interface and give exhibitors a fighting chance at perfection, engineers have had to shoehorn one feature after another into the InterOp structure. It is done with the best intentions, of course. It begins with, “My customers were asking for this now, not at some point in the SMPTE-Compliant future.” It ends with, “I have to do this because my competitor is bragging about how they can do this at no extra cost even though it violates the spirit and the essence of every standard.”

There are too many examples to mention ranging from forensics and audio mapping. Specifics aren’t as important as the fact that the entire industry has floated out far enough from land that some see letters in the water, and some seem to think that they spell H – E – R – E    B – E    D – R – A – G – O – N – S

DCinema Dragons don’t breathe fire. They are light suckers. They cause Dark Screens. Coming to theaters and drive-ins near you.

Why?

Many reasons, partly centered around the effects of software upgrades. Because the upgrade from InterOp to SMPTE-Compliant software is not a simple ‘add a feature or two’ software upgrade. At the best of times, you just never know what you will be causing when you hit that ‘Upgrade’ button. Did the software writer anticipate every single parameter of combinations of hardware and software that is in your situation?

There just are some odds that you come out of the hospital feeling worse than how you went in (look up HAI). Anyone with a computer has had software upgrades that worked for thousands of others, but did not work for them (look up: damn, not again.) There is probably some inverse squared proportionality involved as well. Getting closer to a deadline quadruples the odds of failure.

So, don’t change~! Jeez. That is sooo obvious. Which is what many do. Don’t get the first generation of anything, including upgrades. Especially during summer when all the big movies are playing.

But a horizon event approaches. Some InterOp juggling just won’t work for some combinations of . There are an amalgam of changes coming though, prompted by the teams of Jackson and Cameron. It might be easy to ignore the 60 frames per second requirement of a Cameron release (famous for pushing deadlines forward as he is), but The Hobbit will probably not be delayed. 48 frames per second, stereoscopic 3D. Will it work in the InterOp world? And what other changes will be made

Why 48fps? Phil Oatley, the post group head of technology from Park Road Post (Mr. Jackson’s facility in New Zealand) who spoke at the SMPTE/NAB DCinema Days last April said that they choose 48 because they didn’t know if equipment and exhibitors could change to 60fps in time and in significant numbers. As it turns out, all server and projector manufacturers have announced 48 and 60 fps capability. Sony even put a price on it…$3,000…which they can more easily do for their 13,000 users as they have always used an internal media block in their system.

In this case, Sony has something like the Apple advantage: They control the server, the media block and the projector so the odds are higher of getting a smooth transition. And, they have gotten DCI Compliance (at one moment of software version time…does HFR cause enough of a technology disruption that they need to re-certify?)

A TI-based projector with an SD-HDI interface will be a lot more complicated. An IMB (internal media block) needs purchasing and inserting, which isn’t a cheap investment. It is dependent upon TI-code and code from the projector manufacturer as well as code from the server all working together. How different is the server, which will have had its graphics-serving guts ripped out? …will that need a new cert? Check the DCI site for Compliance passed equipment.

But we have gotten off point. Back a few years ago you could sign a VPF deal and promise that you would use DCI-Compliant equipment and run with the latest SMPTE specs and recommended practices. At the time there wasn’t one piece of gear through the compliance procedures. And since you know that there is no SMPTE Police checking your screen for the required 48 candela/square meter luminance standard, you didn’t feel bad breaking the luminance number when showing 3D, a number that approached moonlight-equivalence at the sides of the theater and barely reached 10cd/m2 in the center. (For info on the light fall off from silver screens, see: 23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?)

But the history of the studios has been to look the other way until there is a technology that fulfills the DCI requirement. When Doremi proved they could do JPEG as the standard required, MPEG suppliers were given notice. When laser light engines can provide 3D at 48 cd/m2 (14 foot-lamberts), will the studios insist that passive 3D systems with their horrid high gain silver screens are no longer allowed (as was done in France recently? See: The Death of Silver Screens~! Vive la France)

We’ll see, but this doesn’t have anything to do with HFR. HFR is outside the DCI specs. It falls into the ‘no less than’ zone, similar to the color primaries. Laser suppliers can pick primaries outside the capabilities of xenon if that is financially and politically worthwhile, just as long as they don’t chose primaries inside the DCI/SMPTE limits.

So what does HFR and SMPTE compliance have to do with each other? Only that they are two locomotives that are running on two separate but not parallel lines. There is no firm deadline for SMPTE compliant DCPs, and no one is saying that InterOp compliant DCPs have a limited life. In fact, the studios expect that DCI equipment will play future SMPTE-compliant DCPs as well as what will become ‘legacy’ InterOp DCPs.

But something, at some time, is going to bulge the balloon of InterOp to the point that going SMPTE-Compliant is the logical move. Engineers at the manufacturers are just going to say, “I can’t play this game anymore. We were promised SMPTE would be the container that fit everything, I did the work, I will InterOp no more.”

There is rumor that this will happen soon. There is a particular setup that is rubbing against the InterOp balloon. Exhibitors are saying, “We don’t want to change until the summer season is over.” Will everything play nice together if only one condition is changed in a system? Possibly. How can you increase your odds?

Go to the ISDCF site that lists all the latest software/firmware versions for the equipment in the field. See to it that you have the latest. That will increase the odds. ISDCF Current Versions

Another thing you can do is prepare a database listing all of your equipment at each projection position, all of the software and firmware versions and all the serial numbers, and leave a field where you can download your .pem file from each piece of gear. Save this and get ready for a note from your distribution center asking for this info.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way
– in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens – Tale of Two Cities

Societies

IBC 2012 Tools and Tips

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The 2nd issue that I noticed is that it doesn’t seem to be trustworthy yet. Besides being slow, it has wrong data. The first event that I checked – the EDCF D-Cinema Update Conference Event – shows correctly on 11 September, but doesn’t show the correct time. It shows 11AM instead of the 10AM time that the IBC site shows. It also doesn’t say where, which the online listing shows. [Room E102]

I very directly asked John Graham, General Secratary of the EDCF, about the rumor that I started which speculates that the Sunday 11AM conference on Future Projection Technologies will be all about Higgs Boson technologies and their application to Digital Cinema.

He says that he can’t announce anything in advance of the conferences.

Both the D-Cinema Update and the Future Projection Tech are free, and both are worth a fortune.

The Conference link is:

IBC2012 – Target specific areas of interest and build your own programme.

Flying into Schiphol Airport is usually pretty easy. Walking out of the customs area there are a couple rings of shops. In the past there has been an IBC welcome table where one can get their travel passes…but the travel pass is not good for the train to the RAI. The penalty for not having a ticket on the train is 35€.

There is also a bus to the RAI. I haven’t taken it and don’t know where the platform is. But the nice thing about the train is that for 3 euros it takes 10 minutes every time. Traffic can make a car or buss ride take 30 minutes.

One can go to the yellow kiosks to buy the train ticket…it isn’t obvious though…why not just select “R” and navigate to: RAI Station? Because the machine thinks of it as Amsterdam RAI…selected under the “A”.

Can you get a ticket with an out of country credit card. Sometimes, though sometimes I have seen people with English cards fail, and I have had problems with my French cards. Carry a few euros is the safe bet. And, definitely, American credit cards won’t work.

This will be an ongoing article with updates…there is still the announcements about the movies to come and most of the cool conference info is obscure…thanks be to the holy pizza that it doesn’t seem to be 3D HFR all the time.

Societies

IBC 2012 Tools and Tips

Leave a comment

The 2nd issue that I noticed is that it doesn’t seem to be trustworthy yet. Besides being slow, it has wrong data. The first event that I checked – the EDCF D-Cinema Update Conference Event – shows correctly on 11 September, but doesn’t show the correct time. It shows 11AM instead of the 10AM time that the IBC site shows. It also doesn’t say where, which the online listing shows. [Room E102]

I very directly asked John Graham, General Secratary of the EDCF, about the rumor that I started which speculates that the Sunday 11AM conference on Future Projection Technologies will be all about Higgs Boson technologies and their application to Digital Cinema.

He says that he can’t announce anything in advance of the conferences.

Both the D-Cinema Update and the Future Projection Tech are free, and both are worth a fortune.

The Conference link is:

IBC2012 – Target specific areas of interest and build your own programme.

Flying into Schiphol Airport is usually pretty easy. Walking out of the customs area there are a couple rings of shops. In the past there has been an IBC welcome table where one can get their travel passes…but the travel pass is not good for the train to the RAI. The penalty for not having a ticket on the train is 35€.

There is also a bus to the RAI. I haven’t taken it and don’t know where the platform is. But the nice thing about the train is that for 3 euros it takes 10 minutes every time. Traffic can make a car or buss ride take 30 minutes.

One can go to the yellow kiosks to buy the train ticket…it isn’t obvious though…why not just select “R” and navigate to: RAI Station? Because the machine thinks of it as Amsterdam RAI…selected under the “A”.

Can you get a ticket with an out of country credit card. Sometimes, though sometimes I have seen people with English cards fail, and I have had problems with my French cards. Carry a few euros is the safe bet. And, definitely, American credit cards won’t work.

This will be an ongoing article with updates…there is still the announcements about the movies to come and most of the cool conference info is obscure…thanks be to the holy pizza that it doesn’t seem to be 3D HFR all the time.

Newsources and Blogs

Manice Goes English

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They don’t seem to have an RSS feed yet, but when they do we will let you know, and add a stream to our new sources on the right side of the front page.

Ollivier Hillaire, publisher and editor of the sites, has great contacts in the field of digital cinema from the early days. It is good to see him continuing and expanding his success.

This comes on the heels of another EU DCinema news site converting its data to English, Frank de Neeve’s Cineserver | Digital Cinema Deciphered site from the Netherlands (or Pays Bas as long as we are in the French motif.)

The EU has many of the same, yet many different problems that can’t be solved in the same manner that integrators and exhibitors have done so in the US. Brining understanding to the client has a long-term goal of both of these respected entrepreneurs.

Newsources and Blogs

Manice Goes English

Leave a comment

They don’t seem to have an RSS feed yet, but when they do we will let you know, and add a stream to our new sources on the right side of the front page.

Ollivier Hillaire, publisher and editor of the sites, has great contacts in the field of digital cinema from the early days. It is good to see him continuing and expanding his success.

This comes on the heels of another EU DCinema news site converting its data to English, Frank de Neeve’s Cineserver | Digital Cinema Deciphered site from the Netherlands (or Pays Bas as long as we are in the French motif.)

The EU has many of the same, yet many different problems that can’t be solved in the same manner that integrators and exhibitors have done so in the US. Brining understanding to the client has a long-term goal of both of these respected entrepreneurs.

In the News

July 9 – Prepare For No Doom [Update]

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DNSChanger Trojan is the name of a piece of malware that was discovered in 2008. It had the effect of calling home to a network server that was subsequently taken down by the US government in 2011.

The concept was that computers would rid themselves of the trojan in the course of upgrades and running security programs…which has happened – except on the 300,000 unlucky few….or maybe more. Regardless of the number, any computer that has the code will attempt to connect to the internet in their usual manner and find an error message. The reason is that the DNS server that their computer has been going to for routing onto the world wide internet was set up as a temporary measure by the US FBI.

These FBI computers were only supposed to be online for 120 days, until March 2012, but there were still a million or two computers banging into the system. So an extension was granted by the court…until 9 July 2012.

To check your computer: DNS Changer Check-Up

Krebs mentions this site if you don’t get the Clean sign: Detect | DCWG

See the following article at Krebs on Security for the details: DNSChanger Trojan Still in 12% of Fortune 500 — Krebs on Security

Good luck to us all.

In the News

July 9 – Prepare For No Doom [Update]

Leave a comment

DNSChanger Trojan is the name of a piece of malware that was discovered in 2008. It had the effect of calling home to a network server that was subsequently taken down by the US government in 2011.

The concept was that computers would rid themselves of the trojan in the course of upgrades and running security programs…which has happened – except on the 300,000 unlucky few….or maybe more. Regardless of the number, any computer that has the code will attempt to connect to the internet in their usual manner and find an error message. The reason is that the DNS server that their computer has been going to for routing onto the world wide internet was set up as a temporary measure by the US FBI.

These FBI computers were only supposed to be online for 120 days, until March 2012, but there were still a million or two computers banging into the system. So an extension was granted by the court…until 9 July 2012.

To check your computer: DNS Changer Check-Up

Krebs mentions this site if you don’t get the Clean sign: Detect | DCWG

See the following article at Krebs on Security for the details: DNSChanger Trojan Still in 12% of Fortune 500 — Krebs on Security

Good luck to us all.

Basic Lessons

How To Break Into Security-Part One

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Kreb's How To Break Into SecurityKrebs on Security has started a series named How To Break Into Security.

I decided to ask some of the brightest minds in the security industry today what advice they’d give. Almost everyone I asked said they, too, frequently get asked the very same question, but each had surprisingly different takes on the subject.

 

How to Break Into Security, Ptacek Edition — Krebs on Security

Now might be a good time to give the job of reading these to your apprentice.

 

Basic Lessons

How To Break Into Security-Part One

Leave a comment

Kreb's How To Break Into SecurityKrebs on Security has started a series named How To Break Into Security.

I decided to ask some of the brightest minds in the security industry today what advice they’d give. Almost everyone I asked said they, too, frequently get asked the very same question, but each had surprisingly different takes on the subject.

 

How to Break Into Security, Ptacek Edition — Krebs on Security

Now might be a good time to give the job of reading these to your apprentice.

 

Articles and News

Promoting Open Subtitles in the Cinema

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Even the Trailers are being promoted~!

Subtitled Trailers! at Your Local Cinema .com – Subtitled and Audio Described cinema

In the US, the Department of Justice ruling on how to handle the situation is still expected this year (1012), according to this document.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (DOJ) Statement of Regulatory Priorities January 20, 2012

Go to Page 4 unless you are interested in other agenda items.

Articles and News

Promoting Open Subtitles in the Cinema

Leave a comment

Even the Trailers are being promoted~!

Subtitled Trailers! at Your Local Cinema .com – Subtitled and Audio Described cinema

In the US, the Department of Justice ruling on how to handle the situation is still expected this year (1012), according to this document.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (DOJ) Statement of Regulatory Priorities January 20, 2012

Go to Page 4 unless you are interested in other agenda items.

Audio Processing

Get Your HI Tracks On

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After a decade of hopes and promises, several large theater chains, entire countries like Australia and major studios have broken the technology and chicken-and-egg barriers to implementing complete access for this part of society who have asserted their right to be included. That the digital caption and listening technology caught up in a flurry in the last year is no coincidence to these moves, but it has taken a lot of work and rigorous testing “plug fests” for years to get to this point.

Regal Cinemas has thrown the latest and greatest gauntlet – all screenings, in all their auditoriums, will be “Accessible” by the end of the year.

There are more than a few challenges ahead for them. They have chosen the Sony glasses and sound systems [See:Previous Story], which are just becoming available. They have the largest number of screens to accommodate, nearly 7,000, which means a lot of people to train and a lot of expectant customers.

But the hardest moment is when the customer puts on the glasses to see the closed captions or the headsets to hear the sound…and nothing happens. Everyone can identify with that sinking feeling. Why? Will they fix themselves? I was promised~!

Oops!!! It was only the trailers that didn’t have the tracks for the hearing impaired (HI). Whoa…I sure wish that wouldn’t happen.

The ISDCF, a association of technical staff from many exhibitor and distributor and manufacturing groups have put out a request from via their chair:

Open letter to Content Providers,

ISDCF has discussed problems in delivery of the HI track (hearing impaired) for digital releases, in particular trailers. In the “old” days the HI track was generated by the “B” chain through the cinema processor – and this worked pretty well. 

Today the delivered DCP movies sometimes contain a studio-mixed HI track and this dedicated channel is used to feed the HI system in the theater. When a product does not have a HI track, in particular trailers, the theater HI system is silent. This is unacceptable. 

The best solution is for every delivered DCP movie or trailer to include an HI track. This could be an HI track created in a studio mixing room or one using a formula like the one used by “B” chain cinema processor systems. 

I would like to ask the help of ISDCF members to get the message out and help encourage release of HI tracks for all digital releases.

Best,

Jerry Pierce
Chairman ISDCF