Watching the debut show of any movie is an exciting experience. Not just because one gets to see it before others, but also in terms of picture and sound quality. As movie reels get older, exposure to light and dust take their toll. The film prints get scratched and their colors fade.

But now, movie fans can enjoy premiere quality at every show thanks to digital technology. Chennai-based Real Image Media Technologies, in collaboration with California-based Intel, is taking digital cinema across India.

"In India, digital cinema will enable simultaneous release and screening at much lower cost than conventional prints while preserving quality over many runs. But what is even more attractive is that the exact solution developed for India is also relevant in the developed markets where digital cinema makes good sense for totally different reasons, such as quality," says Kumar T. Shiralagi. He was director of Intel Capital India at the time of SPAN's interview but recently joined NEA-IndoUS Ventures. Intel has also provided venture capital to Real Image through its $250 million India technology fund in May 2006. In January 2007, Real Image initiated digital screening of Indian films in North America with Mani Ratnam's Guru through Qube Cinema, its digital cinema technology. For the first time, theaters in Chicago and Detroit screened an Indian movie digitally.

Nearly 50 cinemas of the Landmark Theaters group in the United States are equipped with Qube Cinema. The technology is expected to reach more than 300 screens soon, tapping a huge potential market for Indian movies. In India, more than 200 theaters in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala are equipped with Qube Cinema.

Real Image was started by Senthil Kumar and Jayendra Panchapakesan, who first developed Qube Cinema in May 2004. "We are continuously upgrading our system. Qube Cinema servers and projectors are designed in such a way that they are not limited to any hardware format. Hardware can be upgraded easily because the system is based on software, which gives it flexibility," says Panchapakesan.

Traditional film prints are costly and most producers can release only a limited number of prints. Due to this, smaller cities often get older, inferior quality prints. But things can change, thanks to digital cinema. A digital movie is nothing but a movie file that is projected on the screen using a server and digital projector. Its quality remains intact for a long time because the movie is stored on a disc, downloaded through optic fiber cable or via satellite.

"A film print costs about 70,000 rupees, whereas for a digital print the cost is not more than 15,000, including all expenses. Due to this, a digital film can be shown in many theaters simultaneously and a producer can maximize his or her earnings in the first week itself," Panchapakesan adds.

He and Kumar have established a subsidiary of Real Image in the United States called Qube Cinema Inc. to market the technology. "There are a limited number of players in the digital cinema market. We are not worried about competition because our packages are available at half the price quoted by well known companies like Dolby and Kodak. We can convert a traditional theater to digital at a cost of only Rs. 15 lakhs."

But why would any theater spend so much money on going digital? "It's all about the future. You can show digital movies as well as traditional movies in such theaters. Apart from that, the number of digital movies is going to increase in the future and film producers would be releasing their movies in both formats. Then it would be more attractive to run digital copies than to wait for reels," says Panchapakesan.

Kumar adds that Qube Cinema allows theaters to have subtitles in different languages for the same movie. "A movie-on-demand feature is also possible by connecting several theaters to central servers. Theaters can download the films they like and pay accordingly. Servers keep track of each show," says Panchapakesan.

The journey of digital cinema has just begun. Digital Cinema Initiative, a body set up by Hollywood studios such as Disney, MGM and Fox, laid down the accepted standards for digital cinema in 2005. These mandate that the picture resolution should be 2,048 to 4,096 horizontal pixels, compression should be JPEG 2000 and the software should have strong security features. Panchapakesan hopes that these standards would encourage producers to make more digital movies, which would help bring down distribution costs.

But wouldn't digitalization encourage illegal copying of movies? "High quality encryption and watermarking would check this. Movie packages can have start and end dates for screening, which can be remotely modified if needed," says Kumar.