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Dr Man-Nang Chong, founder, chairman and CEO of GDC Technology

GDC raises bar for digital cinemas worldwide

Movies projected onto the silver screen have captivated audiences for more than a century. From tales of love and war, to stories of the supernatural, alien worlds and time travel, films have evolved into an extension of a moviegoer's fantasy journey, and the cinema remains the avid viewer's chosen vessel. 

Supported by:Discovery Reports

Movies projected onto the silver screen have captivated audiences for more than a century. From tales of love and war, to stories of the supernatural, alien worlds and time travel, films have evolved into an extension of a moviegoer's fantasy journey, and the cinema remains the avid viewer's chosen vessel. 

Cinemas have come a long way since they started showing movies using film projectors in the 1880s. With the advent of digital technology and the increasing demand for a more seamless delivery of content, the early analogue film projectors are steadily being replaced by advanced digital projection systems.

One of the innovators who saw the potential of converting cinemas from using 35mm films into adopting digital formats is Dr Man-Nang Chong. A movie aficionado himself, Chong founded GDC Technology in 1999 to develop digital cinema solutions for movie theatres. 

Passionate about digital movie research since the early 1990s, Chong led a team to win the first prize in the 1995 Texas Instruments DSP Solutions Challenge for his digital motion picture project. Chong then turned this world-famous, award-winning project into a commercial success by spearheading the design and production of Revival Digital - a product line used by Hollywood and global studios to digitally restore classic and decades-old feature films.

"I love the movies and it is nothing more than passion," Chong says. "I devoted my entire career to digital motion picture research. I proceeded to commercially introduce more advancement in delivering the stories by reducing costs and improving the movie-going experience that brings patrons to the cinemas. I feel we should be totally immersed in the cinemas - to enjoy, to laugh, to cry and to really feel good about the show. A motion picture is such a wonderful invention where films that cost hundreds of millions to produce can be shared and enjoyed by moviegoers worldwide."

Raising the bar for digital cinema

GDC's products and services are veiled to the typical moviegoer. The solutions work behind the scenes, ensuring a seamless movie projection and a satisfying viewing experience. As a service and technology provider, GDC works with cinema operators and theatre management departments to install appropriate information technology systems for digital cinemas, including projection, playback, theatre management and content delivery equipment.

The key differentiator from analogue, film-based cinemas and other providers is the highly automated nature of GDC's solutions. From the playback and system management to getting the content from the satellite or physical storage and delivering or projecting the movie on screen, GDC's media servers and theatre management systems are raising the bar for digital cinemas worldwide. 

Meeting the highly demanding requirements of Hollywood studios, GDC was the first digital cinema equipment manufacturer to receive the United States' Federal Information Processing Standards security certification for its media servers. "All our digital cinema servers are Hollywood Digital Cinema Initiatives-compliant, meeting established security, quality and technical specifications," Chong says.

The company's media servers, for instance, are certified and used by Hollywood studios to prevent piracy. Movies are ingested into GDC's media servers in an encrypted form and decrypted to projectors using security keys and watermarks. Consequently, studios opt to release movie prints to exhibitors that use GDC's technology.

For the past 15 years, GDC has not had a single film print stolen from its machines. "We are like the Interpol of media," Chong says. "People cannot copy directly from our digital server in the cinemas. Should there be a stolen print from camcording in the cinema, we are able to tell from the stolen print, which can be in the form of internet streaming or DVD, where and when the camcording took place, using GDC media servers."

Understanding that movies in digital formats can also take a huge amount of space and may be prohibitive for complexes with several cinema houses, GDC developed its own theatre management system, TMS-2000, which is a powerful tool that allows centralised control over an entire multiplex. The company was the first to produce such a system and it was used by Singapore's first fully digitised multiplex, which is also the first in the world.

Top global exhibitors choose GDC to provide its projection systems for its reliability and devotion to digital innovation. The company's one-stop solutions also include integrated projection systems, 3D products, projector lamps and silver screens. 

Asian technology with a global link

Apart from manufacturing hardware and developing software for digital cinemas, GDC also emphasises providing value-added services to customers. Together with China Film Group, the largest and most influential state-run film enterprise on the mainland, GDC opened a network operations centre (NOC) in Beijing to provide 24-hour, real-time remote monitoring services for digital cinema systems in China. Through a simple user interface, the NOC provides centralised screen and display controls at various locations. Last year, GDC set up its second NOC in Singapore ensuring hassle-free theatre screenings for exhibitors and moviegoers.

As a global technology company anchored on Asian roots, GDC saw the potential of relocating its Singapore headquarters to Hong Kong in 2000. While digital cinemas have not grown as quickly in China as in other parts of the world, the market is increasingly opening up and the entertainment landscape is becoming more liberal. More than 30 Hollywood movies are now being shown in local theatres, unfolding more opportunities for GDC. 

In 2006, the company partnered with China Film Group to transform almost 1,000 screens into digital cinemas. Today, more than half of China's 24,000 digital cinemas use GDC products. The digitalisation project in 2006 became the catalyst that expanded China's movie industry into becoming the world's second-largest movie market, with box office revenues reaching more than US$4.8 billion last year.

"Our technology marked the start of the Chinese digital cinema revolution," Chong says. "We provide GDC solutions to top exhibitors in Asia including China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Cambodia. We are No 1 consistently in Asia, year after year, but we ship all over the world. GDC products can be found in one out of three cinemas globally."

GDC opened its latest offices in Dubai, Sao Paulo and Jakarta. It continues to serve leading cinemas such as ArcLight Cinemas, iPic Theatres, Landmark Theatres, Reading Cinemas and the TCL Chinese Theatre in the US; Cinemex in Mexico; CGV Cinemas and Lotte Cinema in South Korea; and Aeon Cinema, Shochiku and Sasaki Kogyo in Japan.

The future of film

With a passion for building and designing the most advanced solutions for the digital cinema industry, GDC regularly participates in various tradeshows while showcasing its groundbreaking products and services. One such event where the media and technology merge annually is at the CinemaCon - a global gathering of the movie industry's top players, including production studios, technology providers, theatre owners and movie celebrities. 

Some of the technologies featured at the CinemaCon that paint a picture of the future of film include laser projectors that cast more light units under a screen and an immersive sound experience that is built into GDC's media servers. 

As the first company in the world to integrate an immersive sound decoder and playback inside a media server, GDC, together with DTS, a digital audio entertainment company, jointly demonstrated the new immersive sound technology at the CinemaCon tradeshow. The DTS:X, showcased at the Brenden Theatres at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, imitates the natural sound environment that virtually transports a viewer into the movie's reality. 

"We continue to evolve with the industry's needs," Chong says. "Our job is right in the middle. We have to keep on listening to the storytellers of the world who want newer and better technology to be introduced into the cinema. We have to make that happen because we are powering the digital cinemas."

Responding to demands from Chinese businessmen and Asia's high-net-worth individuals, GDC offers a digital cinema set-up that replicates the actual cinema experience within a customer's private home. More than an LCD home theatre, GDC builds high-end private cinemas for the home, complete with tailored theatre automation systems.

Enlarging its scope to go beyond cinema, GDC also welcomes partnerships with other technology and content providers in Asia and worldwide. "Content is consumed by everybody," Chong says. "It is like food. As we become more civilised, the demand for content will also be greater, and because of this, we look for ways to expand our business while continuing to power the digital cinemas into greater heights."

 

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