Beijing, CHINA—Aug 27, 2006
GDC Technology Celebrates Launch of Second Generation Digital Cinema Server with Successful Showcase at China Beijing BIRTV Digital Cinema Forum
GDC Technology, the leading provider of digital cinema solutions launched its second generation digital cinema (d-cinema) server at the recent Beijing International Radio, TV & Film Equipment Exhibition 2006 (BIRTV).
Succeeding on the same reliable platform that has made its flagship SA1000 server one of the most widely deployed digital cinema servers worldwide, the SA2000 DSR™ Digital Film Server is a “hybrid” server that supports DCI MXF JPEG2000 and MXF MPEG2 Interop formats. The SA2000 Server allows users to exhibit d-cinema contents on JPEG2000 format, which is adopted by the Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI) and maintains its backward compatibility with the MXF MPEG2 Interop format. The same SA2000 Server also plays out alternative contents such as pre-show entertainment, on-screen-advertisement and HDTV live-events in high quality MPEG2 4:2:2 format without the need for another server. In addition, the all-in-one SA2000 Server supports stereoscopic 3-D playback and HDTV live-streaming/recording.
At the China Beijing Digital Cinema Forum held on August 25 during BIRTV where latest updates on d-cinema businesses and technologies were presented, Dr Man-Nang CHONG, CEO of GDC Technology presented the versatile all-In-one SA2000 d-cinema server. “There is no secret that most digital cinema server manufacturers adopt the same digital cinema technologies from SMPTE dual-link HD-SDI standard, Analog Devices for JPEG2000 decoding, Thomson for forensic watermarking and Texas Instruments for link encryption and subtitle” commented Dr CHONG, “With the same picture and audio quality achievable with these digital cinema technologies, the educated customers will now compare the functionalities, cost-performance ratio and reliability of the digital cinema servers when making a buy decision.” added Dr CHONG.
At the Digital Cinema Forum, GDC Technology’s SA2000 was selected with BARCO DP100 projector for the screenings of the latest Hollywood feature film trailers encoded in JPEG2000 12-bit 4:4:4 “XYZ” color space. For the delegates’ comparison and evaluation, ASC-DCI’s “Standard Evaluation Material” (“StEM”) was showcased in both JPEG2000 and MXF MPEG2 Interop formats on the same SA2000 Server; the content was encoded using GDC Technology’s new EN2000 Digital Mastering System that encodes in both variable-bit-rate JPEG2000 and MPEG2 formats and seamlessly packages the content with a common MXF format that is adopted by DCI. A second unit of SA2000 Server had been screening the same JPEG2000 content on BARCO DP90 projector at the BIRTV exhibition booth from Aug 23 – 26.
Along with the availability of the second-generation SA2000 Digital Cinema Server, existing SA1000 servers installed worldwide in many of the world’s best cinemas may also be upgraded with the JPEG2000 upgrade kit, announced at ShoWest earlier this year.