DCDC lowers pricing

[Carsten Kurz]

They obviously react to broadband distribution becoming more popular:

https://www.digitalcinemareport.com/...work-customers

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The satellite delivery network Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition is reducing the prices on feature film delivery for both exhibitor and content provider customers effective today. This lowered pricing comes after a record-breaking year of achievements for DCDC in 2022.

In addition to sweeping price reductions announced at the start of 2022, DCDC saw exponential growth in exhibitors and content providers joining the network.

The network saw the most content delivered in a single quarter during last year’s third quarter, record 91 titles including several live events. The network also reached a new milestone with more than 940 live enabled sites and 30 live events delivered throughout the year.

DCDC’s 2022 pricing reductions proved to be beneficial to the industry as we continue to emerge from the pandemic. With 2023’s pricing reduction, DCDC looks forward to more titles delivered by the network and a year of continued growth for the industry.

DCDC CEO Howard Kiedaisch said, “With 2023 expected to have nearly 50 percent more wide release titles than last year, we are pleased to once again do what we can to help reduce costs for all parties. Since DCDC is an Industry owned entity, we are in the unique position of supporting the aligned interests of both exhibition and distribution rather than being motivated by our own profits.”

Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition https://dcdcdistribution.com/
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[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Now, if they would just wake up and lower the number of screens!!

[Mike Blakesley]

Interesting that the "article" above doesn't quote actual prices.

They "reached out" to me a couple of months ago and wanted to sign us up for a cost of $16 per feature.... apparently they now DO want to sign up single screens, after giving me the old brush-off a couple of years ago. We are paying Deluxe a little bit more than we would for the reduced-price DCDC, but with Deluxe we don't have to have anything on the roof nor run a cable in from outside (or have to sweep snow off of a satellite dish), so I think we'll keep the status quo, at least for now.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Given the amount of data produced by streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, etc., the data produced by cinema broadband distribution is just a blip on the radar for most ISPs. As such, I doubt broadcast satellite distribution will have much of a future in regions were broadband internet is generally available. A 100 GByte download over the Internet used to be quite a challenge and often a multi-day experience, but nowadays, your PlayStation 5 can produce more data in a day with just a few updates...

[James Gardiner]

This is interesting news.

I have discussed this with the dcdc CEO. He indicated to me that in the u.s. /Canada that a significant number of locations don't have anything more then. Old ADSL type internet connection and thats not getting better.

I was super surprised if not skeptical. I would like other people in the region to get back to me. Are 50-100mbit uncapped connection not the norm now and all cinema would have that or better ??? It's like this in Australia and we are know to have slow and over priced internet compared to the rest of this part of the world.

My argument was that as sending a DCP has become as easy as sending an email, the justification for satellite delivery collapses and they need to expand into general internet delivery or be marginalised into non viability (makes this price drop very interesting)

They have the market now and if they did not fill this capability general production companies will start offering DCP deliver for next to nothing to gain business. And from what I see this is already happening.

Still, as in Australia deluxe and other suppliers install a internet line to build a barrier to entry for these ad hoc companies starting to show up. (It's free for the cinema but in reality passed onto the distributor that then on charges the cost to the exhibitor anyway) It's very poor bahavioir as major content delivery service providers refuse to install digital for certain locations, I expect as they are on a black list. (I.e potential Refusal to supply via proxy)
I can see how the encumbenta have been using these mid tier companies to justify behaviour that enforces specific beneficial outcomes. They will not want this as hoc ability for any distributor to set up delivery solutions. It will errode this power. But unfortunately I don't think they can stop it.

[Leo Enticknap]

It is certainly true that outside the major metros (conurbations) in the USA, Internet access can be surprisingly 20-00s. I have never seen ADSL here (though it was commonplace in the UK in the early days of consumer broadband), but either DSL (same speed in both directions) or Internet service provided via cable TV infrastructure remains the norm in many smaller cities and rural areas. In the more remote areas, top speeds of 5-10 MBPS is the worst case scenario. I suspect that the target market for Elon Musk's new satellite service is customers in more remote areas who need more bandwidth than any currently available terrestrial offering can provide.

Interestingly, this problem is starting to be addressed on a local level. In around the mid-00s, dissatisfaction with the quality of Internet service provided by the phone company (Verizon, now Frontier after they spun off their landline business) and the cable monsters reached a critical mass in my home city, with the result that the city started to run fiber lines under all the new developments that were built from 2007, and whenever they had to dig up a road for any other reason. The result is that if you're lucky enough to live in a home or run your business on a property that has the fiber, you can get your Internet service from the city, at the amazing price of only $50 a month for 100 MBPS. Furthermore, it actually delivers that. We were dimly aware of the service but blindly continued to pay Frontier almost double that for 10-20 MBPS on a good day until one day their service went out, with no ETA for getting it back up, which pushed us into action. We're now kicking ourselves for not having acted years earlier.

Returning to topic, until market forces (including, ironically, local government competing with private industry) resolve this issue, there will be a market for DCDC's satellite dishes, in the USA at least. But it's certainly eroding.

[Frank Cox]

Here in Melville the phone company (Sask Tel, which is a "crown corporation" owned by the Saskatchewan government) wired the whole town for fiber but hasn't yet done any customer installations (bringing the wire in from the pole to the building) anywhere in the downtown commercial area. It's a bit strange since you'd think that the business area would be the first to get the fiber but it seems to be the last. Right now you can get fiber pretty much everywhere in town except for downtown.

Having said that, it doesn't really bother me. I have 50mbps VDSL and I find that it's adequate for anything that I want to do, including downloading the movies from Deluxe. Sask Tel is supposed to be turning off the VDSL service in town after the fiber is universally available and when they make it available here I'll get it, but until then I'm happy enough with what I've got.

[James Gardiner]

I find it quite bewildering, that areas of the U.S., the centre of development in internet-based companies, have such poor internet in regional areas. Here in Australia (About the size of the U.S. but with the population of a single larger U.S. state, so there is a LOT of regional), pretty much all decent sized towns, that would be big enough to support a single-screen cinema, has 50-100mbit connection options. Then some that are in the middle of nowhere, can utilise Starlink without a problem. Costs a bit more but it's the price of doing business.

And that would be my argument here. The industry should move to digital-only as it SAVES everyone a huge amount. If you are regional, then like you have to buy an extremely $100K digital projector, you have to pay for a 50mbit or better Internet connection. The price of doing business. (Starlink minimum)

I am quite amazed, due to a few hundred cinemas that decided to setup in internet-challenged locations, that a super expensive satellite delivery solution, and a super expensive physical backup solution is maintained. Commercially, on its own, it does not make commercial sense. To archive a commercial advantage due to artificial conditions, yes I can see it maintained, but as indicated, I can see independent distribution waking up and taking more commercially advantageous routes. For example, I am starting to see independent production companies offering digital delivery services and KDM services, likely a selling point to obtain the post work.

I would assume, the drop in price by DCDC is a reaction to these developments. In the long term, I can see DCDC becoming the main distributor of the major distributors (As they collectively own DCDC) and independents starting to branch off to these more versatile and cost-effective paths. The price drop is likely an attempt to slow this erosion.

Leaning into technological development is a far better path than trying to keep things the way they are due to a perceived commercial advantage. I worked for Kodak, supporting the supercomputers being used to develop the Cineon software, a node-based VFX system that never reached commercial release. When Kodak imploded, I was not surprised at all. The culture of the business was that, if they couldn't achieve a similar profit margin as on film, in the thousands of % only achievable due to a monopolistic position, they would keep shelving a lot of the development they did into digital as it would only erode film resulting in a business in the 30-50% profit margin. A healthy profit but not for a business that was use to 1000+% profits. When Kodak imploded, the only thing worth anything was the patent pool, $9+ billion I think it was sold for.

I can see some similarities here.

[Darin Steffl]

I imagine most US theaters located in any town have access to 50-1000 Mbps services pretty easily either through fiber, VDSL, or cable/coax services. If they don't, T-Mobile and Verizon are expanding coverage of home/business cellular internet service with unlimited data for a reasonable cost. Last resort would be Starlink which also offers 50-150 Mbps speeds pretty much anywhere they have an open cell.

We're using the Deluxe eCinema with no problems but it's $25 per download so hopefully they'll come down in price to match DCDC which is $16.67 per delivery now.

[James Gardiner]

So that's $25 down to $16.67 for the exhibitor? That's interesting but in the end means little. Like here in Australia, the exhibitor pays nothing. And also gets a free Internet link. This obviously costs a considerable amount, and someone is paying for it. The Distributor, who in the end is taking it out of the profit from the film, from the cinema's BO gross. My point is, Free($0), $25, $16.67, these numbers are superfluous. Its how much it costs the exhibitor and the distributor collectively that matters as in the end, the money to pay for "digital delivery" has to come from the cinema operator.

I get annoyed as here in Australia, cinemas have multiple Internet connections forced on them to build a barrier to entry for other digital delivery entities, and in the end. costing the cinema owners a lot extra to pay for all this doubling up of infrastructure. Its crazy, and in these times of compressed attendance, we cannot be wasting money like this.

[Jon Dent]

One of our owners works for the local cable company so he hooked the theater up with their best cable internet speeds, which is somewhere around 300mbps, but our town of 8500 is also wired for fiber (which I have at home). Good internet is getting more widespread, but there's still a lot of bad service in rural areas.

But I'm in the same boat as Mike, we have Deluxe and it works fine and doesn't require dish maintenance, which is great since the only way onto the roof is via a ladder, and we've gotten a lot of snow this year.

[Bob Ezra]

A couple of questions.

Are Deluxe and DCDC part of the same company?

How does Deluxe work?
Is the movie is downloaded to a Deluxe server and then it has to be ingested to one's cinema server?
If so it would seem to be time consuming.

Thank you

[Darin Steffl]

I believe Deluxe and DCDC are totally different. DCDC is delivered over satellite to a Kencast server but you still have to ingest movies from that into a TMS or your servers.

Deluxe delivers a 1U QNAP server that only downloads features that you're booked for. Then your TMS or server ingests it, just like DCDC. You also get Trailmix downloads too.

Both seem to have the same method of ingesting, only Deluxe is via broadband and DCDC is via satellite.

I received info from DCDC and the install process is more complicated and involved because they need to install a dish on the roof and ballast to hold it down, then 2-3 coax cables going to their 12U equipment rack that has a Hughes VSAT modem, and Kencast server. The only thing Deluxe needs is 1U of space in your existing rack so the footprint is much lower overall. You only need to provide it with an internet connection of 50-100 Mbps minimum so the setup is way easier with Deluxe eCinema.

Power usage will be lower with the Deluxe option because it's only one server with some hard drives vs DCDC is a modem and larger server with more hard drives.

Hopefully Deluxe will match the lower cost of DCDC so there's no cost difference between the two options.

[Jim Cassedy]

DCDC is delivered over satellite to a Kencast server but you still have to ingest movies from that into a TMS or your servers..

Perhaps there are differences in various installations, but we have both services at my venue,
and titles from both DCDC and Deluxe automatically get listed in our TMS library. Only when
a playlist is built and scheduled into a particular auditorium is the movie transferred to the local
sever in the auditorium(s) that it's scheduled to play in. So, my system seems to be totally
agnostic on if the movie came from DCDC, Deluxe, or if we ingested it manually from a DCP
drive idirectly nto the TMS. It handles them all exactly the same here.

[Marcel Birgelen]

A satellite distribution solution like DCDC usually "downloads" all movies it receives, because it's a broadcast system. All DCPs in their distribution channel get "air time" and your server will be listening to that broadcast and save a copy on your local harddrive. It's essentially like copying a song from your local radio station on tape, you have to wait until they broadcast it, until you can save it. That's why those services tend to save everything they receive and is somewhat relevant for you, even if you've not specificially booked it.

Internet distribution works differently: You select what DCPs you want to receive and it will only download what you've booked, since the Internet is largely a unicast beast and not a broadcast affair (any attempts in the past at trying to make it a "broadcast", failed quite prematurely, as multicast on the Internet can be considered broken, but that's why we have Content Delivery Networks nowadays...).