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News Archive - UK

Cineworld Group Reports Profit Drop On Higher Costs, Acquisitions, Restructuring

LONDON (Alliance News) – Cineworld Group PLC said pretax profit dropped 19.3% for the year after the firm was hit by increasing costs, and acquisition-related expenses.

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Created on March 7th, 2014. Last updated on March 7th, 2014.

Filmhouse to Replace Picturehouse as Operators of Belmont Cinema

It’s a saga stretching almost as long as the Star Wars films.

But today, Aberdeen City Council once again announced that the Belmont Cinema would be taken over by new bosses.

Centre for the Moving Image (CMI) are the parent company of the Edinburgh-based Filmhouse cinema and will begin operating the Belmont from the start of next month.

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Created on March 7th, 2014. Last updated on March 7th, 2014.

Crest Nicholson to reinvigorate former Odeon site in Cheltenham

The regeneration of Cheltenham’s crumbling Odeon site has taken a major step forward.

Award-winning housebuilder Crest Nicholson has today announced the purchase of 1.88 acres of prime development land which includes the derelict Odeon cinema in Winchcombe Street and the former Haines & Strange Vauxhall garage in Albion Street and Gloucester Place.

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Created on March 7th, 2014. Last updated on March 7th, 2014.

Sell-out crowd as Windmill Cinema reopens

MORE than a year after it closed, the Windmill Cinema was reopened on Friday night to a packed screening of a film widely tipped for Oscar success.

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Created on March 7th, 2014. Last updated on March 7th, 2014.

Sony and National Theatre Live Presents the World’s first 4K cinema broadcast of War Horse

2014-02-27 17.26.41Thursday 27th February 2014, I was lucky enough to be in the audience for an evening which saw the world’s first 4K presentation of an Event image001Cinema showing transmitted live into a cinema. The collaboration between the National Theatre Live and Sony Cinema saw the ever popular play “War Horse” captured on Sony F55 cameras at the New London Theatre and broadcast directly to the Curzon Cinema in Chelsea, to an audience which was a mixture of invited industry members and the general public, in 4K. National Theatre Live is of course an initiative by the National Theatre to broadcast live performances onto cinema screens around the world, and is one of the most popular Event Cinema shows. Since its first season, which began in June 2009, over 2 million people have now experienced the work of National Theatre Live in cinemas worldwide.
In order to achieve this first Sony needed to work with both of the National Theatre’s long term partners Creative Broadcast Solutions (CBS) who were responsible for capturing the event in 4K along with NEP Visions who provided the Outside Broadcast infrastructure to send the signal via satellite to the Curzon Cinema. Over 1000 other cinemas worldwide will also received a simultaneous live HD feed which was distributed by Links Broadcast.The mix feed were also recorded on a Sony MasterDeck, both for archive purposes and the creation of a 4K DCP master to be sent to cinemas around the world. NEP Visions also recorded 4K ISOs onto two additional Sony MasterDecks for later use.
The  4K signal was uplinked on to SES Astra’s 3B satellite using 36Mhz of capacity in order to achieve the maximum possible video data rate within 2014-02-27 21.46.17the modulated 4K transport stream. This 4K signal was downlinked at the Curzon cinema in Chelsea via a 1.8M Links Broadcast antenna and fed in to Adtec RD70 receiver decoders before eventually being delivered to Sony’s 4K projector.
The presentation was flawless in its transmission and technical presentation. Like all new technology and firsts there were technical challenges, around contrast which will be resolved in the longer term. Like all technical firsts the issue was largely around the use of prototype components – namely the 4K live input board.The Sony SXRD projector with the prototype 4K live input board used for the demonstration had a 2000:1 contrast ratio, which is a similar or even better contrast ratio than competitor DLP projector systems. For live theatre performances Sony’s DCinema R515 projector series the additional contrast ratio (between 8000-10000:1) will compensate the theatrical lighting set up very well and will enhance the picture quality. This can already be seen today with this projector series for films in DCP format and for 2K live feeds. Sony tell me that the 4K live input board for the R500 series is due later this year. But there is a wider challenge of capturing content in theatres without all the lighting which a film or television sets would normally have.
Not surprisingly Sony were very excited about this project. David Bush, Head of Marketing at Sony Professional, Sony Europe said,  ”At the heart of Sony DNA is the will to push technological boundaries always further. Being able to demonstrate, with the help of partners, a worldwide first live 4K workflow from stage to screen, on a project as well loved and renowned as War Horse, represents a true milestone in the development of 4K technology.” 
joey&manAnd of course you couldn’t have such an important evening without having a special guest at the end of it all. Much to the great daviddelight of the audience there was a guest appearance of Joey from War Horse who was provided a great photo opportunity to this historic crowd.

 

The higher contrast ratios on the projectors will help in the future. Speaking to members of the general audience they were enjoyed watching the ‘broadcast’ and the image on the screen. Let’s remember that this was the first time this had been done a 4K capture to screen chain, of live content. The move from prototype to release status of boards allowing for use in the R515 projector will see the image improve. This is true of all firsts and it will only improve. So well done to all those involved. I look forward to seeing the next part of this development.

 

Sony Press Release
The Sony press release about the event provides further technical information, available from here.

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Created on March 7th, 2014. Last updated on March 7th, 2014.

Why Digital Alone Won’t Kill Second Run Movie Theatres [Celluloid Junkie Blog Post]

The threat that the digital conversion poses to single-screen and drive-in cinemas have been highlighted several times on CelluloidJunkie.com (here, here and here), but there is a third category of cinemas that also face an existentialist threat with the phasing out of 35mm prints. Second-run cinemas, also called discount theatres, dollar theatres, dollar movies and sub-run theatres have built a business on showing film prints and films no longer playing in regular cinemas, typically one or two months after the film’s opening; a business about to go away.

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Created on March 4th, 2014. Last updated on March 4th, 2014.

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