NATO issues digital guidelines
Report will ease exhibitor growing pains
NATO released its first Digital Cinema System Req-uirements report two years ago. An updated report released Tuesday tweaked and expanded those suggested requirements.
The requirements are separate from the specifications laid out by the Digital Cinema Initiative, a consortium of the major studios. DCI's specs target distribution and piracy concerns; NATO's requirements concern digital theater operations.
One area where exhibs would like to see improvement is the process by which they manage the "keys" used to unlock the encrypted digital movie files. Keys are sent separately from the digital films and downloaded.
NATO also says there needs to be interoperatibility between digital servers. A theater owner buying a server today isn't guaranteed that the same software will work when she or he buys a new server down the road, for example.
"If an exhibitor buys a server from vendor A, and attempts to replace it with a server from vendor B, the chances are that the software infrastructure that moves movies, keys, playlists, schedules and logs will no longer function without rework," said NATO's digital cinema consultant Michael Karagosian.
Exhibs also want the servers to have closed-caption support.
Karagosian will brief exhibs on the updated report at next week's ShoWest confab, which opens Monday in Las Vegas and runs through March 13.
NATO's requirements do not take precedent over DCI's.
