Sony Digital Cinema Solutions is announcing the next phase of its xMassif Digital Cinema Content Exchange Platform, including new content providers.
Sony started the xMassif pilot program in early 2013 to collect valuable user feedback and promote strategic alliances to enable a complete solution prior to the platform’s commercial launch.
Emerging Pictures will deliver diverse content for the xMassif platform, including specialty films and live and pre-recorded world-class operas and ballets. The New York City-based event cinema and specialty film distributor plans to use the platform to provide booking request services to exhibitors for specialty film offerings, both individual titles and curated strands of genre-specific films. Sony and Emerging Pictures are also working together to deploy artMover receiver/servers in more than 200 digital cinema locations.
“xMassif is an open platform designed to enable more programming options for content owners and exhibitors equipped with digital cinema projection systems," said Tac Sugiyama, Director, Digital Cinema Solutions at Sony Electronics. “The combination of xMassif and artMover technology provides a complete solution for event cinema content, including live events and even 4K live events in the near future.”
Emerging Pictures will work with international producers and rights-holders to build industry awareness of the xMassif platform's unique capabilities.
"With digital cinema systems now widely in use, the time is right for a technology like xMassif to help our industry update its business practices for buying and selling films and event cinema programming,” said Barry Rebo, Managing Partner, Emerging Pictures. “This platform supports our focus on developing sustainable relationships between the exhibition and distribution communities, and combining the xMassif marketplace with the artMover delivery platform is exactly what we were looking to do.”
Emerging Pictures and North American satellite services provider Microspace are also expanding Emerging's live delivery capabilities timed for the start of the Bolshoi Ballet's 2013/2014 season. As a future capability, programs pre-ordered on the xMassif content exchange platform will feature the option to automatically trigger satellite delivery of live events as well as new or library title recordings delivered via broadband or hard drives at the venue’s preference. Files can be sent in either DCI-compliant DCP or MPEG HD formats. The hybrid satellite/terrestrial delivery system originally developed for Emerging by Microspace in 2009 was recently renamed artMover.
The artMover platform, widely adopted by leading specialty venues and quality multiplex operators for their alternate content needs, has recently expanded to further accommodate specialty film applications in the DCI-compliant DCP format. It also retains complete compatibility with Microspace's existing network for store-forward DCP file delivery and live alternate content presentations. The artMover system is available to other content distributors looking for a high-quality, cost-effective way to present both live and DCP store-forward fare for event cinema use.
“Microspace is thrilled to be expanding our digital cinema network with Emerging Pictures and the artMover network,” said Curtis Tilly, Director, Digital Cinema Distribution at Microspace Communications Corporation. “The addition of xMassif to this joint effort will give exhibitors greater booking flexibility while taking advantage of the benefits of artMover's satellite and terrestrial electronic delivery.”
Spartacus, Live from Moscow, produced by Paris-based Pathe LIVE, was transmitted at 11AM EST on Sunday, Oct. 20 to more than 300 cinemas in the U.S. and Canada. Additional venues will screen time-shifted recordings either later that same day, encored later that week, or at any subsequent time that best suits their programming needs.
On December 7, the Opening Night of the Teatro alla Scala's 2013/2014 Season, the RAI TV production of La Traviata, will be transmitted live at 1PM EST, and also made available for time-shifted playback later that day or as subsequent recorded bookings via the xMassif platform.
Venues booking the live transmission can simultaneously order DCI-compliant DCP and MPEG HD recordings for future projections, which also triggers the appropriate file delivery via artMover.
Visit the Sony Digital Cinema Solutions booth (#403) at ShowEast 2013 for a demo of the xMassif Digital Cinema Content Exchange Platform.
About Capitol Broadcasting
Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. is a diversified communications company which owns and/or operates WRAL-TV, WRAL Digital, WRAL-FM, WRAL-HD2, 99.9 The Fan, Microspace, the North Carolina News Network, CBC New Media Group and Wolfpack Sports Marketing in Raleigh, NC, WJZY-TV and WMYT-TV in Charlotte, NC; WILM-TV in Wilmington, NC; WRAZ-TV and The Durham Bulls in Durham, NC; and real estate interests including the American Tobacco Project and Diamond View properties in Durham, NC.
