Beijing, China—Jun 27, 2006
Barco and Dadi Digital Cinemas sign historic agreement for large scale digital cinema deployment in China
Digital cinema pioneer Barco and Guangdong Dadi Digital Cinema China Ltd. today signed a historic agreement to roll out digital cinema across Guangdong province in China. Dadi digital cinemas will deploy up to 300 digital projectors, of which 100 are ordered today and will be installed over the next 18 months. Guangdong Dadi Digital Cinema Chain Ltd. is a full subsidiary of Sino-I, a Hong Kong listed company, which is active in several IT related businesses across China.
Guangdong is China’s most populous province with over 90 million inhabitants. Guangdong, which borders the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, often takes a leading role in technology deployment and is seen by China watchers as the province where one has to prove a high tech product before taking it across the mainland.
With this first large scale commercial roll-out, China, already the world’s 2nd largest digital cinema market, has now taken a decisive step towards full digitalization of its over 10,000 cinemas. Like with many other technologies China is leapfrogging the rest of the world.
Barco, which enjoyed almost 100% market share in digital cinema in China over the last 2 years, strengthens its position in the Chinese market with this historic agreement. Over the last years Barco has been working closely with China’s CFG, Sino-I and Dadi Digital Cinemas to develop its world leading series of 2k digital cinema projectors, based on DLP CinemaTM technology of Texas Instruments. The new agreement further involves the build out of a 24/7 support network and Network Operations Centers.
P.H.Yu, Chairman of Sino-i/ Dadi expresses that “ Dadi digital cinemas is aiming to build the first fully DCI compliant digital cinema chain and speed up the digital cinema development in China together with Barco. We truly believe this is the direction and only answer to accretion of a new era in the history of film industry in China.”
“Dadi’s vision and development plan is world leading and we are proud to be part of it. We are satisfied that our efforts and commitment to the China market have been rewarded.” says Frank Christiaens, Managing Director for Barco in China.
Barco will be expanding its offices in Guangdong province to support Guangdong Dadi’s rollout. With 300 staff in Greater China today Barco is already clearly the most committed player in the China market. Barco has gone beyond simple sales and distribution and started full R&D and manufacturing at its Changping facilities. Barco expects to continue to build on this local strength in the years to come.
