London—May 29, 2007
Kodak Enters ‘The Hospital’ To Install Kodak Digital Cinema Content Player
Private London Club To Offer Digital Projection With Kodak Technology
Kodak Digital Cinema is pleased to announce that The Hospital, a private members club for creative professionals, has installed a Kodak Content Player JMN3000 in their 30 seat cinema in London. The player will be used for digital cinema presentations to their members as well as to other audiences in the United Kingdom.
“The Hospital is exactly the kind of organization we love to do business with,” said Dan Clark, sales manager for Kodak Digital Cinema in the UK. “They have a growing brand, a first-rate management team, and have established an environment that attracts creative professionals. We’re proud they’ve chosen our player as meeting their standards because their members include the most knowledgeable and critical artists in the industry.”
Since its introduction less than one year ago, the Kodak Content Player has built a reputation for reliability throughout Europe and beyond. This unit handles JPEG and MPEG-compressed movies, including 3D MPEG features, automatically, and is the first player to include Kodak Image Science. Its versatility is especially important because the screening room in The Hospital is used for multiple purposes, to show a diversity of motion picture content.
“Our theatre complex offers a modern, comfortable, and sophisticated entertainment environment,” said David Marrinan-Hayes, marketing communications manager for The Hospital. “We’re well acquainted with Kodak in our booth and so when we decided to include digital projection, we again talked to Kodak. Kodak’s presence is consistent with our high quality image and expands the capabilities we offer.”
In its three years of operation, The Hospital has become a pre-eminent centre for creative and media professionals in the London area. Built in 1749, the building housed an actual hospital for its first 250 years. Beginning in 1999, the building was renovated and transformed into a multi-media space containing Europe’s first HD studio, an art gallery, restaurant and private members’ club for those working in the creative industry in London.
“Our members and audiences expect us to keep pace with the latest technology, to be able to screen mainstream features as well as other independent movies,” said Marrinan-Hayes. “Much of that work is now available in digital form and so our challenge was to install a system that would be right for today, but also let us grow with our expectations for success in the future. We are pleased to have chosen Kodak.”
The Kodak player can handle a full range of feature content, from local language movies to full studio releases, and from documentaries to work by smaller independent filmmakers. It can handle encrypted or unencrypted content with MPEG or JPEG compression. The JMN3000 meets the evolving specifications set by the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) consortium.
“We’ve designed our content player for high reliability, but also for ease of use,” said Kodak’s Clark. “It’s highly flexible and projectionists tell us they find it intuitive to operate. This is the right unit for the Hospital as they begin their involvement in digital cinema.”
“The creative industry is built on strong relationships, enduring partnerships, and an ability to re-invent everything you do,” said Marrinan-Hayes. “Those are the same principles on which we built The Hospital. And so, more than choosing to just install a system, we are choosing to work with a company that shares our challenges and can help us achieve our goals. We’re confident Kodak can help us do that.”