A revised DCI v1.3 Specification is said to be in progress. Even if published soon, as rumored, more changes to the DCI specification will continue to be forthcoming. Some studios are considering changing the specification to allow a Key Delivery Message (KDM) to have an empty Trusted Device List (TDL), making it a business decision as to whether or not to populate it. If populated, the KDM TDL will marry the server to a family of projectors. There’s reasonable concern that the TDL will point to the wrong projectors, resulting in dark screens. If the TDL is left unpopulated, DCI requires that the server not play the movie. In practice today, the TDL is not populated. This is only possible as servers today are not DCI-compliant. In a DCI-compliant world, if one wanted to avoid the issues of using a TDL, a spec change would be required. Another possible change to the DCI spec may be brought about by the need to accommodate the security message requirements of TI’s forthcoming Series 2 projector. Stay tuned.
Dolby partnered with Arqiva for satellite distribution of digital cinema content in Europe. The deal is supposed to leverage Dolby’s mastering facilities, and as such puts Dolby in direct competition with Technicolor and Deluxe. The relationship with Arqiva cannot be exclusive, as Arts Alliance already has a satellite distribution deal in place with them. If anything, it appears that Arqiva is spreading its wings to insure that it scores a significant share of the digital cinema satellite distribution business in Europe.
Bernard Collard left XDC. Bernard may be remembered for his occasional knack to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But he is passionate about digital cinema, and was indeed an early pioneer. He was with EVS when they introduced their first digital cinema server, and as the effort spun off to create XDC, he stayed with it. Bernard simply said that his contract had expired, and was not renewed.
And last but not least, a new narrated video presentation on the status of digital cinema has been posted. Among other points of information, the video explains the complex issues behind VPF agreements.
