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Airtel to enter digital cinema platform
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008, 16:43 IST
Bangalore: Bharti Airtel, one of India's major mobile phone operators is now eying on developing srategies to offer digital cinema to its subscribers. Digital cinema has already attracted the attention of global telecom companies and Bharti plans to add it to its existing three screen strategies of mobile phones, IPTV and broadband.
"We have a three-screen strategy and would like to conquer all of them by giving consumers a uniform and consistent experience. In the long term we will definitely cover the fourth screen (digital cinema)," Manoj Kohli, Managing Director and CEO, Bharti Airtel told Business Standard.
Bharati's three screen strategy refers to the consumer accessing TV at home through Bharti's IPTV and DTH offerings, the mobile phone in the car through the company's mobile telephone services and content on the PC through Airtel broadband services.
Kohli further added that they were studying various media models and have not come to a decision yet. Bharti has decided not to get into content creation or develop its own Airtel broadcasting channel.
As digital film making does not require the film printing activity which constitutes over 20 percent of the cost of a film, it provides large savings to production houses and such films are stored on servers.
Moreover, the piracy of films on CD's would be minimal in digital film making and it would reduce the possibility of revenue loss for the producers. To receive and store films the exhibitors will have to install servers and should put up digital projectors. The film can be distributed to the theater halls through a central server if the theaters are connected through a fiber optic link.
It is estimated that 10 percent of multiplexes have already been converted to digital halls and since most of Hollywood and Bollywood films are being produced in digital formats the exhibitors may have to convert the multiplexes to digital halls.
As part of expanding revenues mobile companies are now entering new areas of business. For instance, Reliance, another major mobile operator bought Adlabs, a Mumbai based cinema, and now has a national chain of movie theaters which it plans to link through a fiber optic back.
Many of the foreign telecom providers like Korea's S K Telecom, France Telecom and U.S.-based Qwest Communications have expanded their operation in to digital film sector.