Belgium, Angleur —Dec 22, 2006
Night at the Museum – Twentieth Century Fox International presents digital cinema version of movie in a dozen of XDC JPEG2000 Cinemas in Germany.
With the German release of Night at the Museum, a dozen of cinemas in Germany will present the digital cinema version of this Ben Stiller starrer.
“The release of ‘Night at the Museum’ marks a significant milestone for Fox International in Germany as the first digital release utilizing DCI-compliant equipment.”, said Joe Ortiz, Executive Director, Sales Administration, Twentieth Century Fox International, who continued "Working with our partners in the cinema industry and with companies such as XDC who play an important pioneer role in the world-wide introduction of digital cinema, Twentieth Century Fox has the absolute conviction that digital cinema based on the DCI spec1 gives audiences and cinema operators the only reliable pathway into the digital era".
As in other global territories there is the necessity of reducing massive (2-3TB) movie data files to manageable proportions of around 150 to 250GB. To present digital movies a technological transition in the compression methods is taking place in Europe too. Hitherto, compressed movie data files have been produced in an ‘Inter-frame compression format’ MPEG-2. With last year’s publication of the DCI Specification, the DCI member studios are going over to using an ‘Intra-frame compression format – JPEG2000’. Some, such as Twentieth Century Fox International are already only supplying content in JPEG2000.
“XDC supports the DCI spec and the necessary transition 100%” said John B. Birchell Hughes, Senior Vice President Production & Distribution, XDC International. “In April 2007, XDC will introduce the CineStore® G3 Hybrid (MPEG-2/JPEG2000) play-out server to the market. In the meantime, in order to establish and harmonise the necessary international workflows, XDC is working with various film content providers in the JPEG2000 format and is equipping over 20 screen locations with JPEG2000 servers. These servers have been fully tested to meet the stringent requirements of content providers. XDC is particularly pleased that Twentieth Century Fox International is supporting XDC by showing ‘Night at the Museum’ on the XDC financed screens.”
Night at the Museum (dir Shaw Levy) with it’s all-star cast including Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Ricky Gervais and Robin Williams reaches German screens on 28.Dec. and can be seen in digital cinema versions in Belzig, Düsseldorf, Emsdetten, Erlangen, Kronach, Lichtenfels, München, Neu-Ulm, Nürnberg, Rheine und Stuttgart.
