Belgium, Angleur —Nov 16, 2006
XDC and Kinoton start a new cooperation in order to enhance the XDC roll out plans in Europe
XDC and the German projector manufacturer Kinoton have launched a new cooperation for the integration and the delivery of 2K digital cinema installations with Kinoton projectors. “The focus will mainly be on the German speaking territories - Germany, Austria and Switzerland – but, since Kinoton is active in many European countries, XDC will of course consider any market opportunity.” said Bernard Collard, XDC General Manager. XDC has ordered a first batch of 21 Kinoton projectors that are already being installed to Kinoton customers and integrated into the open XDC Network.
As a consequence of the cooperation agreement, the 2K Kinoton projectors – DCP30 and DCP70 – are now part of the XDC offer, along with the projectors from Barco, Christie and Cinemeccanica, since XDC is projector agnostic. “XDC provides financing customized solutions and a wide range of services to help exhibitors and distributors to go digital. Today, this also applies, of course, to Kinoton projectors.”, said Bernard Collard, who continued “XDC is now offering new options: either leasing and full support services for the whole equipment … this is a long term agreement from minimum 6 up to 10 years … offering more value for money than the XDC Classic offer; or full support services only for those exhibitors who can afford it or who just want to do it by themselves. They can buy the equipment and sign a long term deal (minimum 6 years up to 10 years) for full service agreement by XDC for a flat monthly fee. The projector and the server are then financed by the exhibitor. In both cases, the exhibitor is the owner of the server security certificate. This means that the exhibitor has the full access rights on the equipment. Other resources for exhibitors are potential extra revenues from pre-show advertising and alternative content. Content providers have the possibility to use third party labs endorsed by XDC or to use the XDC Digital Lab.”
In theatres which have chosen Kinoton D-Cinema projectors, Kinoton will ensure the integration of the projectors and XDC servers as well as hardware maintenance, while XDC will provide online maintenance, helpdesk and remote operations via its Network Operations Centre. “We are very pleased that XDC have included our D-Cinema projectors in their offer. Thanks to this cooperation which has also extended to some specific R&D developments, our companies we will be able to deliver first-rate automated and integrated technology”, Kinoton CEO Christoph Dobler pointed out. “Our DCP projectors have been specially designed for cinema requirements in order to provide maximum benefit for our customers. The DCP 30 and DCP 70 do not only feature sophisticated 2K DLP Cinema® technology for extraordinary bright and crisp pictures, but are extremely flexible and space-saving as well, let alone particularly easy to operate. Commercial digital screenings have generated very positive reactions from our customers already. With the support of our strategic partners, we are confident that Kinoton will take a major stake in the European digital migration.“
Assuming DCI certification procedures will be available in early 2007, all the projectors approved by XDC will be delivered from April 2007 onwards with the new XDC JPEG2000/MPEG2 Hybrid G3 Server.
Bernard Collard concluded “XDC has got multilingual staff, recognized local partners and integrators, and strong connections with worldwide post-production facilities. By offering both full system installation and secure content management from post to screen, XDC has become the leading trusted partner for digital cinema in Europe. We have now raised our ambitions upwards and plan to operate a very large scale deployment of digital screens within the next 2 years.”
