There was a general air of optimism this year. After the necessary squeezing or removal of release windows during the pandemic, last year at CinemaCon, the studios restated their respect of the cinema experience, and used every opportunity to stress the importance of cinema being the first and ultimate place to see a movie before it’s consumed at home. This sentiment was echoed loudly again this year. There was also a good slate of movies coming up and the studios made a good effort to bring in talent again. A few comments were heard from fellow CinemaCon-goers about the high proportion of dark, violent, horror type movies this year but that was before the final studios had shown their titles, which may have rebalanced perspectives somewhat. There was also a very interesting push towards Anime after Sony Pictures’ acquisition of Crunchy Roll.

The EDCF, ISDCF, and ICTA made a joint Tech Talk session which was super informative, where we touched on several subjects. These ranged from the recent certificate issue that prevented playback of content that otherwise should have played, highlighting the need for cinemas to ensure software updates are installed promptly. Three of edge-case image artefact issues were also highlighted that were caused by some incompatibility between legal JPEG2000 frames and some legacy servers being unable to decode them. The worst-case scenario was a server crash but, in most cases, the results were some transient image artefacts. It was also discussed that DCPs that contain an Immersive Audio Bitstream (IAB) are now starting to be labelled with IAB in the CPL rather than Atmos, but they mean the same. The IAB was standardised as a compatible MXF file between immersive audio vendors in 2019 by SMPTE and later constrained by the ISDCF (Doc 15 – IAB Application Profile 1) because of the findings from their subsequent cross-vendor interoperability plug-fest.

From a technical perspective, HDR was a big topic during the show. There is an influx of new LED companies now with 14 manufacturers offering 27 cinema LED displays between them that have all been certified by DCI. This raises quality issues over sound where, with a solid LED wall, it is not abo position the screen speakers behind the screen but, instead, in compromise positions around the edges of the screen. Barco launched their much-anticipated light steering projection technology, and Dolby announced their Dolby Vision + Atmos proposition for those cinemas not wishing to go full Dolby Cinema. Cinema’s embrace of HDR to such an important step especially when considering how normal it is to experience HDR in the home these days.

Data was another big topic. Laura Houlgatte, CEO UNIC, led a panel which highlighted the importance of sharing data between exhibition and distribution. Some data is owned by exhibition and some by distribution. “We need to share data.”, said Otto Turton, Vue International, who went on further to express how Vue would like to sell tickets for titles coming up in the next 12 months, and to work with distribution on finding ways to honour those sales so far into the future. Ann-Elizabeth Crotty, Sony Pictures Entertainment, valued how real-time information helps them adapt their creative marketing campaigns. The panel felt that that the next five years would offer greater collaboration.

All in all, CinemaCon 2024, and the preceding EDCF LA Tour, was a very valuable catch-up on global topics that affect Europe. I believe that the EDCF is well placed to offer Europe a technical voice as it continues to collaborate with all key stakeholders both within Europe and on behalf of Europe on the global stage. The next event of interest is the EDCF Problem Solving Round Table held at CineEurope, Barcelona on Monday, June 17^th, 2024 at 14:00.

Image by Rudi Nockewel from Pixabay