Paris—Feb 10, 2006
First JPEG2000 commercial release in continental Europe
Nordisk Film Biografer selects Éclair Digital Cinema to upgrade digital screens to DCI compliance
Nordisk Film Biografer and Éclair Digital Cinema completed the first commercial
release of a motion picture in JPEG2000 in continental Europe with the screening
of Disney’s film “Chicken Little”.
This release is the first step in a partnership between Nordisk Film Biografer
(“Nordisk Film”), the leading exhibition chain in Denmark, and Éclair Digital
Cinema (“Eclair”) to upgrade Nordisk Film’s screens to DCI compliance.
Nordisk Film currently uses 2K DLP Cinema® digital projectors. These servers
were, until now, MPEG-2 HD servers. Since July 2005, Digital Cinema Initiatives,
LLC (DCI), a joint venture formed by the major studios, has issued a
specification which defines JPEG2000 as the unique file compression format for
D-Cinema releases.
All the major studios have announced their support of DCI compliant systems and
their intention to release their motion pictures in this format. Nordisk Film
has decided to follow this recommendation and upgrade its projection equipment
to DCI compliance.
Éclair has performed the upgrade of Nordisk Film’s screens by installing
equipment based on JPEG2000 servers from Doremi Labs, Inc. in the Palads (2
screens) and the Imperial in Copenhagen as well as the BioCity in Aarhus. These
movie theatres are now the first, and to date, the only theatres in continental
Europe equipped to show digital movies to paying audiences using this new
compression format.
In the year to come, Éclair and Nordisk Film will collaborate to tailor this new
technology to Nordisk Film’s operational needs, to finalise the technical
infrastructure managing the whole security work-flow defined by DCI and to
connect these screens to Éclair’s Network Operating Centre in order to offer
high-level reliability and availability of the machines through remote
monitoring of the equipment.
“Upgrading to JPEG2000 will allow us to provide better entertainment to our
audience. We have always been at the forefront of digital cinema technology and
we know from past experience that the emergence of an internationally accepted
standard such as JPEG2000 is the condition for the generalization of digital
releases in Europe. We are happy to be able to rely on the digital knowledge of
Éclair, a well-known service provider of the European cinema industry, to help
us manage this crucial technological and operational transition.” said John
Amund Tønnes, C.E.O. of Nordisk Film Biografer.
“These installations represent a milestone in the development of Digital Cinema
in Europe. We are very proud to have been selected by a major European cinema
chain such as Nordisk Film for this upgrade. We intend to build on Eclair’s
outstanding experience in digital image and sound quality management to provide
distributors and exhibitors with the most efficient and reliable digital cinema
technical services in Europe.” said Gwendal Auffret, C.E.O of Éclair Digital
Cinema.
