Arts Alliance Media leads the way for digital cinema in Europe by holding first commercial JPEG2000 screening on QuVIS Cinema Player

Arts Alliance Media leads the way for digital cinema in Europe by holding first commercial JPEG2000 screening on QuVIS Cinema Player

Disney’s ‘Chicken Little’ is first film to be shown commercially in DCI compatible format

Quvis Cinema Player Arts Alliance Media, Europe’s leading digital cinema company, has screened Disney’s latest release ‘Chicken Little’ in JPEG2000 compression format, using MXF packaging and security keys in a format recommended by the Hollywood studios as the standard for digital cinema. The screening, held at City Screen York, was played from a QuVIS Cinema Player and marks a significant milestone in the adoption of digital cinema in Europe, as the first commercial screening to be compatible with recommendations of the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative). The DCI, a consortium of seven Hollywood studios formed to define universal standards for digital cinema made its recommendations in July 2005. These included specification of JPEG2000 as the uniform compression format, MXF as the packaging technology and specified encryption and key delivery methods. AAM’s subsidiary company, Arts Alliance Digital Cinema, last year won the $20m contract to install and run the 240 screens of the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network (DSN). The QuVIS servers used in the DSN are being upgraded to be DCI compatible this spring. This will be the first in a series of upgrades that will take place as the DCI standards are formalised. Fiona Deans, Arts Alliance Media’s Director of Digital Cinema, commented “Arts Alliance Media is proud to be the first European digital cinema company to be DCI compatible and pleased to be supporting pioneers of digital cinema such as Disney and QuVIS.” Chicken Little is also being screened digitally in 3D from QuVIS players on two of AAM’s UK installations including Odeon Printworks. Chicken Little is released nationwide in the UK by Buena Vista on Friday 10th February.