Digital Cinema User Requirements

22 February 2002

On December 12, 2001, Exhibitor Associations around the world presented their concerns and requirements regarding Digital Cinema Systems, listed below.

International Exhibitor Associations Concerns for digital cinema

Our Goal:

  • To encourage the development of fully interoperable, competitive products that can be maintained at relatively low cost, in the manner of today's film projection systems. We need to accomplish this while providing a minimum digital presentation quality that exceeds that of film, and that meets the quality needs of the creative community. To achieve this goal,international cooperation is needed.

Our Needs:

  • Minimum presentation standards for image projection, including color gamut, contrast ratio, and pixel count.
  • International standards for digital image and audio data representation, storage, and play out.
  • System support for more than one method of movie data delivery (e.g., physical, satellite transmission, fiber, etc.)
  • International acceptance of a single encryption algorithm.
  • Rules for digital rights expression and for electronic methods of exhibitor authorization that duplicate the current rights and facilities existing in 35mm technology.
  • International acceptance of a single image compression algorithm.
  • International standard for a single audio compression, if implemented.
  • International standards for electronic interfaces, networks, and protocols used on all equipment, including secure interfaces.


In addition, the National Association of Theatre Owners has compiled the followingset of User Requirements for Digital Cinema.

NATO DIGITAL CINEMA USER REQUIREMENTS

Overall
1. The system architecture shall insure the lowest cost of ownership.

2. Normal maintenance procedures shall not compromise the security of valued content.

3. The system shall make use of, wherever possible, existing and established standards to govern system interfaces and processes.

4 Content shall be playable with uniform results on different makes and technologies of playback and projection equipment.

5. In order to promote product competition, proprietary technologies shall be standardized and fairly licensed.

Content Packaging
6.Digital content shall be packaged for efficient store and forward distribution, so as to minimize the use of the facility's data storage.

7. The system shall allow the Exhibitor to have full discretion over presentation of ads, trailers, and features.

8. Exhibitors request the ability to select language, rating version, etc.

Distribution
9. The system shall employ "single inventory" distribution of content, such that the same set of digital files can play with uniform results on different makes of equipment.

10. Content shall be distributed such that completeness and integrity of data is validated automatically upon receipt, and can be validated manually after receipt.

11. Digital content that is encrypted prior to distribution shall retain the original encryption throughout the distribution process.

Content Protection
12. The mechanisms and processes that support content protection shall not interfere with normal business operations within the facility.

13.The content protection and right management system shall support a policy of "No Dark Screen". When a facility is authorized to play cont, then usage of the content may be logged in an audit trail by the exhibitor, and no effort is made to prevent the content from playing within that facility.

14. Content decryption keys shall be delivered to exhibiton sites based on the facility, and not on the identity of specific projection equipment.

15. Keys or licenses shall be delivered to the facility in a non-repudiate manner.

16. Contenet shall only be decrypted, whether of the original encryption or a link encryption, in components that pass an authentication process, where authentication is defined as a secure process that determines the legitimate nature of the component. (E.g., "I am a projector.)

17. Digital image streams or files shall not be made available in clear text form in unprotected components, networks, or links of the playback system.

18.It is desired that playback systems provide either an image or audio watermark that encodes sufficient information for forensic evaluation.

Encryption
19.Cryptographic content security shall be based upon strong, established, tested, non-propriety encryption algorithms.

20. If decryption algorithms and link encryption algorithms are to be renewable, they shall be renewable without obsolescence of hardware.

Audit Logs
21. Audit logs shall be securely retained by the exhibitor.

22. Audit logs, or portions of audit logs, shall only be available to the exhibitor and by parties who have contracted with the exhibitor for access. Parties who have contracted for access shall only have access to data that is material to that party.

Control and Monitoring
23. The system shall have networked supervisory controls and monitoring that can be remotely accessed by means of secure networks.