The event will start at 2130 CET (9.30PM in Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin)with intro and support group.

The Concert will start at 2200 and will last until 2330 CET.

DDCinema is glad to announce its new 2008-2009 season.

All the events, both recorded and live, will be distributed in high definition through satellite. In view of the new season DDCinema and XDC will offer an interesting list of Operas subtitled in all languages.

SEPTEMBER 2008

Sept 16, 2008 - L’italiana in Algeri - ROF Rossini Opera Festival, Italy
Composer : G. Rossini - Director / Conductor :Dario Fo/Donato Renzetti - Cast : M. Pizzolato, Maxim Mironov, M. Vinco
Language : ITA with subtitles

OCTOBER 2008

Oct 15 2008 - La Sonnambula- Cagliari, Sardinia, Teatro Lirico - LIVE
Composer : V. Bellini - Director / Conductor : Hugo De Ana/Maurizio Benini - Cast : Eva Mei, Simone Alaimo, A. Siragusa
Language : ITA with subtitles

NOVEMBER  2008

Nov 11, 2008 - Tosca- Arena di Verona
Composer : G. Puccini - Director / Conductor : Hugo De Ana / Daniel Oren - Cast : F. Cedolins, R. Raimondi, M. Alvarez
Language : ITA with subtitles

DECEMBER 2008

Dec 3, 2008 - Aida -Palermo, Sicily, Teatro Massimo- LIVE
Composer :G. Verdi - Director / Conductor : Franco Zeffirelli / Maurizio Benini - Cast : Amarilli Nizza, Marco Berti, Paata Burchuladze
Language : ITA with subtitles

JANUARY 2009

Jan 13, 2009 - - Le Roi d’Ys- Liége, Opéra Royal de Wallonie
Composer :Edouard Lalo - Director / Conductor : Jean Louis Pichon / Patrick Davin - Cast : Guylaine Girard, Eric Martin-Bonnet
Language : FRA with subtitles

FEBRUARY 2009

Feb 2, 2009 - Jackie O.- Bologna, Teatro Comunale
Composer :Michael Daugherty - Director / Conductor : Damiano Michieletto / Christopher Franklin
Language : ENG with subtitles

MARCH 2009

Mar 17 2009 - La Traviata- Liége, Opéra Royal de Wallonie - LIVE
Composer :G. Verdi - Director / Conductor : S. Mazzonis di Palafera / Paolo Arrivabeni - Cast : Cinzia Forte, V.Simeoni, Saimir Pirgu
Language : ITA with subtitles

APRIL 2009

Apr 21, 2009 - The Legend of the invisible city of Kitez- Cagliari, Sardinia, Teatro Lirico and Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow
Composer :N. Rimski-Korsakov- Director / Conductor : Eimuntas Nekrosius / Alexander Vedernikov - Cast : (Russian cast)
Language : RUS with subtitles

MAY 2009

May 15-23 2009 (*) - Madama Butterfly- Venezia, Gran Teatro La Fenice - LIVE
Composer :G. Puccini- Director / Conductor : Eliahu Imbal, Keita Asari - Cast : Micaela Carosi, G. Pisapia, G. Viviani
Language : ITA with subtitles
(*) to be confirmed

JUNE 2009

Jun 16, 2009 - Im Weissen Rössl- Mörbisch Seefestspiele (Austria)
Composer :Ralph Benatzky - Director / Conductor : Karl Absenger / Rudolf Bibl - Cast : Rainhard Fendrich, Zabine Kapfinger, H. Serafim
Language : GER with subtitles

JULY 2009

July 16, 2009 - Le Nozze di Figaro- Madrid, Teatro Real - LIVE
Composer :W.A. Mozart - Director / Conductor :Emilio Sagi, Jesús López Cobos - Cast : L. Tezier, Barbara Frittoli, Isabel Rey
Language : ITA with subtitles

All the operas are delivered by satellite at the premiere dates mentioned in the following schedule. But it is also possible to get a playback digital copy for projections after the premiere date.

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Cinema Expo 2008 was an amazing trade show for XDC with many enthusiastic discussions. The XDC booth was visited by an impressive number of people stressed by 4 press releases. The meetings agenda was really full.

New technology updates were shown by our expert team like the Dolby® 3D Digital Cinema server integration, the TMS Plaza demo as well as a dynamic pre-show with a single player. The event was also an opportunity to meet many exhibitors and answered to their questions about the XDC VPF initiative.

Jerome Delvaux, VP Technology at Belgium-based XDC, explains how fully-integrated and networked Digital Cinema solutions can assist exhibitors.

Digital brings new opportunities for the central management of a cinema multiplex with the Theatre Management System (TMS). The question is: would you, as an exhibitor, prefer to have timely updates and overviews on all of your operating digital screens? If so, then there’s no longer any need to go to every single projection booth before starting the show to check if the 35mm projector is ready to run or else whether the audio system is playing properly and at the correct volume. With integrated and networked digital systems, all areas of the cinema are now interconnected, internally as well as externally.

 Theatre Management System

While most exhibitors are now familiar with digital projection systems, it seems they’re less well-informedwhen it comes to the opportunities offered by the TMS which provides more flexibility, effective monitoring control and new business possibilities such as live events, digital adverts and data-processing. With it, exhibitors can manage all of their multiplex screens directly, centrally, and therefore remotely, from the convenience of their desks. TMS also brings many new integrated and networked features that don’t even exist with the analogue technology. All day-to-day operations, weekly movie uploads and screening schedules are integrated into the system and so it is possible to set up a complete show for the entire multiplex (including preshow programmes, ads, trailers and movies). Externally, the cinema is connected to the booking system, advertising agency, distributors and content providers, as the following schematic illustrates.

Media-Catcher

The XDC Cinestore® Plaza (the engine room inside each multiplex in which resides the server) is perhaps an excellent illustration for the range of solutions offered by the TMS for a typical multiplex. It’s a hardware and software suite that enables the full management of a network of screens from a single point, while boasting a library capacity of up to 14Tb. It also includes a media-catcher for all kinds of media used in delivering content. Whether exhibitors use USB 1.0/2.0, Firewire, SATA, external Ethernet disks or internal harddisk cartridges, all that is needed is to plug in to the mediacatcher, the latter allowing the exhibitor to transfer content via a broadband connection or else via satellite according to the operator’s requirements. Ingesting from the TMS, either to individual screens or to the central library, can be readily performed. It is also very straightforward to set up and transfer shows to specific screens, thus scheduling an entire multiplex while no longer needing to be concerned whether or not the assets are stored on the Screen Management System local disks. All these features are available because the exhibitor is now managing a network of screens instead of several single screens.

In the very near future, the TMS will prove to be the centrepiece of the multiplex amid our ever-emerging and interconnecting digital world. Additional features will also include the management of plasma or LCD screens within the cinema lobby, as well as the digital posters dotted throughout the multiplex itself. The TMS will also be able to manage newer, emerging technologies such as mobile advertising and/or seat-sensor technology.

Great news! The “3 Monkeys” movie won the Award for the Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

The DCP has been prepared by XDC. We wish a lot of success to Nuri Bilge Ceylan the director of the film who met our DCL team at the beginning of the month.

A focus on XDC during the 61st Cannes Film Festival.

XDC Booth #206 is installed in the “Village International Pantiero” along the Cannes harbour. We are sharing the booth with Wallimage, the Walloon Regional Film Fund.

On May 16th, XDC held a press conference in order to explain its involvement this year as Official Partner for digital cinema. Belgium has a strong presence at Cannes with many films in competition and in the parallel sections too. The “Beers & Cheeses” party was a great success as well as the famous well-known Belgian party on the Beach … where one was able to see some Belgian ministers and other VIP’s dancing and enjoying the Belgian food and drink.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Director) and Gökhan Tiryaki came to XDC to meet our Digital Content Lab team and checked their “3 Monkeys” movie in digital in our QC room.

The movie was processed by our DCL and selected this year at the 61st Cannes Film Festival Competition.

RoWo interviewed Serge Plasch concerning the development of RoWo-Digital 2.0 which is the first DCI-compliant solution for the distribution and exhibition of digital film in Germany.

Why do you favour cooperation with RoWo-Digital 2.0 (or the RoWo-Group) ?

RoWo has developed a very advanced and innovative system for the distribution, the projection and the management of digital advertising into cinemas. Thanks to RoWo technology, and XDC developments, it is not required to have two different players for Digital Cinema and for advert. The clips are stored inside the Central Advertising Management System and forwarded to the XDC D-Cinema server (player) through the Gigabit Ethernet LAN. XDC server is always handling the requested automation in order to manage the screen. As streaming is not used, this is the offline mode, because the content is transferred from the Central Advertising Management System to the XDC server, acting as Screen Management System, prior to be played out.

What in your vision is the special quality of RoWo-Digital 2.0?

The programming flexibility is clearly the added value of the RoWo solution.
Thanks to the digitalisation, an advert can be booked for a week, a region or can even follow a specific film.

Is there something in RoWo-Digital 2.0 which other contenders don’t have?

The RoWo technology covers the whole chain of digital advertising from encoding to exhibition. Their knowledge is really valuable.

How do you qualify the know-how stemming from the long term cooperation between RoWo and Fraunhofer?

This is not really an added value for the collaboration with XDC because our engineers have always been active within SMPTE and DCI discussions. But, of course, it gives them more credibility allowing them to have a broader interaction with other digital cinema servers on the market. We both have different expertise (DCI Digital Films for XDC and Digital Advert for Rowo) and then we need to understand the specific requirements of each field of activity. This collaboration is an opportunity for them to understand digital cinema, and for us, to acquire a better knowledge in advertising.

How do you see the future of digital cinema in the world in general and in Europe – Germany in particularity?

Large roll out already started in the USA with AccessIT (about 4000 screens). AccessIT intends to deploy up to 10,000 systems throughout the U.S. and Canada over the next three years within their phase 2. Digital Cinema is now on its way to major rollouts in Europe too, moving from early adoption via the current rapid growth and transition phase to its first financially viable implementation phase. With the CGR deal in France with AAM for 400 screens, things should really start this year. We see that some European exhibitors will make a decision this year for deployment programmes financially backed with the VPF model or another viable solution. Thousands of screens should actually be installed in 2009. In Germany, all the industry players are waiting for a decision about the so-called “German Initiative”. In the meantime, some exhibitors are going digital with XDC and its leasing solutions. This is for example the case of Wolfram Weber (Cinecitta Nürnberg) for which XDC is currently installing digital systems for all the screens of the 21-theatre multiplex.

XDC was present on its german partner booth ( FTT) at Baden Baden. They did many meetings with exhibitors and shared different issues about their Deployment Operations. XDC has also welcomed the announcement about the german initiative.

Bernard Collard and Fabrice Testa were at the DigiTraining 2008 in London last april. XDC presented its Business Model and co-sponsored the Closing Dinner in collaboration with their UK partner Sound Associates, represented by Jerry Murdoch. 45 participants from 14 different countries took part in the “DigiTraining Plus – European Cinemas Experiencing New Technologies” course, organized by MEDIA Salles between 9 and 13 April.

Fabrice also talked about Alternative Content Entertainment and gave more information about DDcinema. Our Digital Content Lab provided 6 European movie clips to Media Salles.

The new element in 2008 was the venue: after four editions in Belgium, this time it was the turn of the United Kingdom, the European country with the highest number of digital screens: almost 300. Gaining a better knowledge of the objectives and ways of public funding that have fostered this development and becoming acquainted with significant private initiatives were some of the course objectives. The programme included visits to cinemas which, like the Curzon Soho and the Kino Digital in Hawkhurst (the latter fitted exclusively with digital projectors), are counting on the new technologies to broaden their offer to the public, backing European films and emerging film-making in particular.