Deluxe "eCinema" delivery service is coming in December

[Mike Blakesley]

NO it is not.... you mean you haven't seen any of my previous rantings about that? I even offered to pay for it and still no go. But this Deluxe thing could be better, we'll see.

[Carsten Kurz]

Okay, I'll say it: In Germany we as exhibitor do get paid for electronic feature delivery to us. Not much, but, it can recoup the cost of your broadband.
A second service we use does not pay us money, but they installed, maintain and pay for a dedicated 200MBit/s cable connection.
Of course, one way or the other, transfer cost are hidden in your distributors booking minimum guarantee. I assume you have that in the US as well?

Of course, even paying a decent amount for electronic delivery would still be beneficial, as you save the hassle and cost of returning a drive.

We now get, I'd say, 95% of our DCPs by electronic delivery, and 100% of our trailers. We're single screen 50/50 mainstream/art house. Naturally, in the beginning the mentioned company wanted to boast as many exhibitor clients as possible towards the studios. So they certainly burnt money for equipment and installation when they started their business here. They have recently been bought by MPS and Deluxe. They probably intended that outcome right from the start.

https://www.motionpicturesolutions.c...nt-to-cinemas/

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess the situation in Germany more or less reflects the situation in most Western European countries. DCP delivery via digital means is essentially free for the exhibitor. If an asset arrives in physical form, it's usually some independent production or some special release. A recent development has been that cinemas start to do their own internal content delivery towards their locations, as dedicated multi-gigabit connectivity via dark fiber, DWDM and more traditional MPLS services have become increasingly more affordable. You can get quite a lot of connectivity in exchange for cutting a few people from your payroll nowadays...

[Darin Steffl]

We signed up right away for eCinema as well. We have 200 Mbps broadband already so we're all set. They said there are delays for the actual servers or NAS appliances so they're hoping to ship in December.

I'm excited for this to replace our hard deliveries and it will save us some money. Trailers will be nice too so hopefully we can only ingest what we want into our GDC instead of everything like we do now for TrailMix.

[Mike Blakesley]

hopefully we can only ingest what we want into our GDC instead of everything like we do now for TrailMix.

You can already ingest just what you want..... just select the titles you want and leave the rest. On the GDC you just click in the "Transfer" column to put a checkmark next to the titles you want.

We only ingest the "scope" version of trailers, since the vast bulk of movies are in scope. If we ever have a flat feature film, I just run the scope trailers anyway -- that way the "feature" picture is bigger than the trailers, which is cool. I also do regular housecleaning where I dump the old versions of trailers -- we only have the latest version on our system.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I can see these downloads taking days ion many places that do not yet have fiber internet...

[Marcel Birgelen]

We have a symmetric 1 GBit connection over fiber, but depending on the load on the delivery CDN, stuff can still take the better part of the day to download. But on the other hand, if they send it out via snail mail, it can also take days to get to you...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

$25 per feature is more than we're paying DCDC per film. Is DCDC not available to everyone?

DCDC will not take on single screen theaters. Not 100% sure what the minimum number of screens is to get it, but Mike Blakesly does know. I have one customer with three screens in one location and a single screen down the street. He has DCDC at the three screen and just puts the single screen content on a CRU and takes it down the street and loads it in...

But, how many theaters have fiber internet? It's pretty common around here. But in more rural areas it's not at all common... yet. Downloading a movie on 100kbps old style internet is gonna take a while....

[Barry Floyd]

DCDC will not take on single screen theaters. Not 100% sure what the minimum number of screens is to get it

I don't think its the number of screens so much as the number of films. I know of a single screen drive-in on Pennsylvania that has DCDC. Since most drive-ins run double features, we tend to cycle through lots of titles, even as a single screen. My theatre is a twin and we've been on DCDC for about 3 years now. I guess they probably have a magic number of film titles versus equipment cost they have to justify.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It's both actually, because a single screen can not do the turn over required. Two screen probably can. Three for sure can do the turn over. 2nd Run is a no unless you have lots of sub run screens.

[James Gardiner]

May I ask..
From my understanding, DCDC (or equivalent digital delivery solutions by Deluxe and others) was $49 per delivery to the distributor. Is this $25 on top of that costs? I fail to see the reason for them to drop the costs to the distributor only to raise the cinema cost (Who is already charged via the MG that contributes the the distributor cost). I suppose the question is. Exactly what is the total costs, exhibitor and distributor now under the eCinema cost structure?

I have a lot of inside understanding on this due to being involved in contractual development and court cases that exposed a lot of internal models. If people want, I can write a brief on it here to help you understand whats going on.. (An informed decision is a better decision)

But one main point. DCDC and this eCinema move is only expected. In reality DCDC is not cost effective, and is likely being transitioned away from over the coming years. DCDC and satellite delivery was more about content delivery dominance, of which Deluxe appears to have purchased everyone now so has been archived utilising more cost effective delivery systems now. As internet becomes faster and cheaper every day, DCDC becomes more of a boat anchor they want to move away from. And this new dominance play puts them in a position to do that now.

But there is a lot more to it, of which I have never seen mentioned here.

[Mike Blakesley]

Deluxe used to charge $49, but some time ago it dropped to $40... (I think when film went away, is when that change happened, if memory serves.) From what I understand, Deluxe eCinema costs $25 per title booked, as opposed to the old $40 per title to have a DCP shipped. So for us, it's a savings of $15 per title.

BUT, since we are a small single-screen player, we have to provide our own 100mb internet. We already have broadband, of course, but upgrading it to 100mb will eat up the savings. (But, having the content come in over the internet will be such a convenience that I wouldn't care if it even cost a bit more.) Apparently for the big boys, Deluxe will pay for a separate 100mb internet connection. So they're attempting to break even on it, it appears.

DCDC's program only has one "tier" of service -- a flat fee per title you book, but they provide the storage hardware. I offered to pay per title, but they weren't having that. Which is weird, you'd think they would want to get all the screens they could. But, this IS the movie business, which is known for its wacky policies.

According to Deluxe, the average download time for a movie on a 100mb connection would be about 6 hours. (Our location DOES have fiber.) Since most bookings are done on Monday or even the previous week, unless there's an internet breakdown, delivery shouldn't be a problem. Deluxe says that if there is a delivery failure that isn't resolved within a day before a title opens, they will dispatch a hard drive overnight so the booking is covered.

The biggest difference between DCDC and Deluxe is, with DCDC the system downloads all of the movies in the system, and you copy over the ones you need. With Deluxe, nothing is downloaded until a booking is entered into their system (except trailers, of course).

[James Gardiner]

Deluxe used to charge $49, but some time ago it dropped to $40... (I think when film went away, is when that change happened, if memory serves.) From what I understand, Deluxe eCinema costs $25 per title booked, as opposed to the old $40 per title to have a DCP shipped. So for us, it's a savings of $15 per title.

This is still clear as mud. From my understanding, Deluxe cost $49 per digital delivery, Physical HD was more.
The question is, if the eCinema solution now includes a $25 to the exhibitor.. Is the same $49 or $40, whatever it is now, still also charged to the distributor? Resulting in a $65 total charge for Deluxe doing the work? Cost and who pays for it is very important in this scenario.

In Australia, those looking to get into this market also insist on controlling the internet link. The reason for this is more about locking out competitors then anything else. And controlling the pipe to the cinemas. And as such a form of power/influence over what the cinemas can show. Typically, after a second internet link, costs go up significantly due to infrastructure is not designed to deal with more and so you have to install a completely new connection at huge $$$

This also make little sense when internet is getting to about 100mbit and minimal costs. A single link can deal with pretty much everything a cinema needs. DCP delivery and all other internet requirements of a cinema.

As sending a DCP is becoming as trivial as sending a KDM, realistically any form of control of the link is, an attempt equivalent to locking the industry into using FAX machines so they cannot move to Emails, and use the ability to control were you can get FAX paper as a gatekeeper move.

I am not against this but we need to understand these motives and business decisions as to make sure we as cinema owners invest in the right path.

As cinema owners, we have experience in the use of gatekeeper technologies such as Dolby-SR/SDDS etc and how it affected us in the past.
There are reasons DCI intentionally insisted on technologies utilised in the DCI standards were patent free. the new IAB (Over ATMOS) being a prime example.

There is always a lot of maneuvering to avid entities forming gatekeeper workflows in our industry. And to be honest, we cannot afford such occurrences going forward. The industry is already under a lot of financial stress.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess the DCDC system has a far bigger one-time installation footprint than this system, as it includes both the dish and the installation of the dish and required wiring. Since the DCDC server receives all movies, it will probably also have more storage than the Deluxe system. I'd say it's a bit stupid they don't allow single-screen theaters to cover some of the up-front cost, but I guess it's too hard for them to diverge from their "standard models"...

@Mike

Since you got the box installed, did you already receive a feature via on-line delivery? Would be interesting to see how well the service works in practice and what content is available on it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This is still clear as mud. From my understanding, Deluxe cost $49 per digital delivery, Physical HD was more.
The question is, if the eCinema solution now includes a $25 to the exhibitor.. Is the same $49 or $40, whatever it is now, still also charged to the distributor? Resulting in a $65 total charge for Deluxe doing the work? Cost and who pays for it is very important in this scenario.

Maybe my feeble mind hasn't processed all information Mike provided, but I thought it was quite clear:

- Delivery via snail mail/courrier by Deluxe: $40, used to be $49 per feature
- Delivery via their on-line distribution network: $25 per feature

Small theaters need to provide their own Internet uplink, bigger theaters get their link sponsored (probably limited up to a certain amount).

Over here in Europe, it's usually the distribution company who pays for the actual distribution. So, distribution per both snail mail/courrier and on-line service is usually free, unless it concerns a special booking.

In Australia, those looking to get into this market also insist on controlling the internet link. The reason for this is more about locking out competitors then anything else. And controlling the pipe to the cinemas. And as such a form of power/influence over what the cinemas can show. Typically, after a second internet link, costs go up significantly due to infrastructure is not designed to deal with more and so you have to install a completely new connection at huge $$$

This also make little sense when internet is getting to about 100mbit and minimal costs. A single link can deal with pretty much everything a cinema needs. DCP delivery and all other internet requirements of a cinema.

From the friends I have over in Australia, I've learned that Internet connectivity still comes at a premium. Meanwhile, over here, a link with 100 mbit/s download capacity is considered "basic" and is about the minimum you can get with any broadband subscription, setting you back like $30-$50 a month on a $150 install fee... I guess Mike's situation, is somewhat in between...
Still, it's not uncommon for distribution companies to try to control their delivery network, as it's still quite a lot of data they need to transfer. Partnering with some ISPs and putting the content closer to the edges on their network can drive network costs down for both the distributor and the ISP and can ensure sufficient throughput to the end-subscriber.

Also, if the exhibitor decides to put the service on some crappy shared and otherwise overloaded broadband subscription, the experience will be bad for all involved, so it's not unusual for them to ask for a dedicated connection.

As sending a DCP is becoming as trivial as sending a KDM, realistically any form of control of the link is, an attempt equivalent to locking the industry into using FAX machines so they cannot move to Emails, and use the ability to control were you can get FAX paper as a gatekeeper move.

It's still not as trivial as sending a KDM, because that involves just a few bytes of information. A DCP is still quite a considerable blob of data and it requires faultless delivery. Not that it's rocket science, but it still requires some non-trivial infrastructure to do this on a large scale.

Also, the studio/distributor already controls the KDM, so, why bother about the delivery method of the DCP? If they don't want you to play the movie, they won't give you the key anyways.

There is always a lot of maneuvering to avid entities forming gatekeeper workflows in our industry. And to be honest, we cannot afford such occurrences going forward. The industry is already under a lot of financial stress.

The studios always have been THE gatekeepers in this industry. They own the content, they decide, in large part, who gets to play what and on what terms.