That is, after 2020, the mainland film box office in 2021 will once again win the global championship. This is a "high starting point and a good start" in the 14th Five-Year Plan for the film industry: China's film industry is upgrading from the world's largest represented by 80,000 screens to the "big and strong" pursued by the 14th Five-Year Plan. Among them, a set of "projection hardware" system that can adapt to the future film industry screening needs, can be highly autonomous and controllable, and can meet the future industrial upgrading direction has become an inevitable demand.
In January 2022, the industry sent an exciting good news: the LED movie screen independently developed and manufactured by AET Altai officially passed the Hollywood DCI certification! At the same time, the film projection and image processing system supporting the screen, jointly developed and produced by AET Altai and domestic system and player companies, has also passed the Hollywood DCI certification.
Screen + image processing and playback system, fully independent research and development, national production, and through the Hollywood DCI certification, AET Altai is the first among mainland enterprises! This also represents a historic breakthrough in the exploration and practice of "next-generation film projection technology" with LED display technology as the core: the mainland is eager to usher in a number of emerging film screening halls that meet international technical specifications and are completely self-produced and independent in 2022.
Cross the "ultimate" barrier of the industry
Why does China's film projection system have to pass Hollywood's DCI certification? From the perspective of market significance, there are mainly two points: First, if our film projection products want to enter the international market, they must meet the standards and rules of the international market - Hollywood's DCI certification is the de facto standard of the international market of the film industry. Second, in the domestic market, only by using equipment that meets DCI standards can the cinema line obtain the authorization of foreign copyright holders to screen films imported from the international market - this is an inevitable condition for the commercial operation of the cinema line.
For film projection equipment companies, DCI is the entry threshold of the market! According to industry experts, it was not that there was no domestic projection equipment to enter the cinema line market before, but it was only entering a specific market that did not involve the copyright of foreign film screenings, such as the auditorium of the organ; or entering the market with the help of other people's platforms - that is, doing product OEM for international brands. Either way, it is decided that local film projection equipment companies cannot "become bigger and stronger".
AET Altai has successfully obtained DCI certification in both the film projection screen and the processor system, which is a milestone in the local film projection industry and lays the "foundation" for AET Altai's corresponding products to compete with international brands in the global market on a large scale. "In particular, the double breakthrough of 'screen + processor' has broken the improper competition of international competitors under the pretext of 'my processor and your screen matching is insufficient' after the previous separate screen products obtained DCI certification" - no longer need to cooperate with people, but their own all-round solution to a set of system problems, which is "technically really strong" underpinnings.
Three major breakthroughs lay the foundation for international leadership
Of course, if the DCI certification of AET Altai film screens and processors is limited to "filling the gap in the domestic industry", then it will not be able to bear the "14th Five-Year Plan" responsibility of "national film projection equipment": AET Altai film screen + processor and playback system. It has also achieved a series of "new" technological transcendence.
First of all, the systematic research and development and autonomy of the screen + processor has broken more market competition bottlenecks and brought "the special effects of new LED display technology, which is highly matched with the optimization of the processor's picture quality". For example, LED display technology is a technology with an ultra-high refresh rate. AET movie screen meets the high standard image quality requirements of "16+bit high grayscale, 3840Hz high refresh rate, 120fps high frame change rate". This also requires that the film projection processor also meet such high-performance requirements in order to truly match this "better" screen.
Second, the AET movie screen, in the history of LED film screening, once again broke through the "technical ceiling" of simulating the effect of "traditional projection". That is, the AET movie screen not only has the unique advantage of "higher picture quality brightness" of LED film projection, but also has the ultra-low brightness projection mode of 48nits (that is, DCI standard 14LF), which can fully realize the special experience of "dark environment" movie viewing in traditional movie screening.
In particular, the traditional cinema projector system, when projecting 3D pictures, has to sacrifice 50% brightness, which in turn seriously affects the quality of movie viewing. This problem will become a thing of the past on AET movie screens: maintaining brightness, contrast, color range and viewing angles comparable to 2D pictures when projecting 3D pictures provides an unprecedented foundation for upgrading film projection systems and high-quality projection experiences.
Third, this time the AET movie screen + processor system passed the DCI certification, bringing a series of "solutions", rather than a single model of products. That is, on the basis of 4K + high resolution, it has 8M, 10M, 14M, 20M standardized size options to meet a variety of film format types, such as shading method wide screen 1.85 (1.66): 1, deformation method wide screen 2.39 (2.35): 1, ordinary movie screen 1.37:1, to achieve "comprehensive coverage of existing film screen demand files".
It can completely and seamlessly replace the mainstream cinema equipment on the current market, which is the advantage of 'serialization' and supporting of AET movie screen products. Industry experts pointed out that the AET film screen + processor system, whether it is a high degree of independent innovation and manufacturing, a high degree of marketization and commercialization, or many breakthroughs and upgrades in the screening experience, means that the competition in the film projection market is opening a new era of "prelude".
A trailblazer targeting the next generation of markets
In the past 20 years, the technological changes in the film projection industry have undoubtedly been enormous: digital projection technology, digital copyright and digital distribution technology, 2K and 4K clarity technology have all brought about earth-shaking changes in the industry. From the perspective of consumer perception, these technological innovations are fully focused on the "IMAX" and other giant screen experiences.
The IMAX giant screen concept is not "new": the first successful IMAX film for mankind appeared at the 1970 Osaka World Expo in Japan. However, from then until 2003, excluding the screens of non-commercial institutions such as museums, the IMAX screens of commercial theaters around the world were only more than 100 pieces. However, by 2010, this number has increased by 200%, and the number of global IMAX screens will reach more than 1600 in 2021. In 20 years, the commercial IMAX theater line has grown more than 10 times, bringing about the prosperity of giant screen movies.
Represented by IMAX, in the past 10 years, the high-quality screening experience system, including China Giant Screen, Dolby Atmos, LUXE Giant Screen Hall, CINITY Hall, etc., has become a "powerful symbol of the film projection market" at a cost of tens of millions of yuan per screen system. However, in these systems, the hardware such as the core screen + processor of the projection system without exception continues the traditional scheme of "projection" equipment, and the core light valve products are in the hands of a very few foreign giants such as TI in the United States. This also makes the domestic film industry's exploration of the next-generation projection system and the exploration of the next-generation content standard "always subject to people" and "can only follow in the footsteps of others". In fact, in 2021, the mainland will add an average of 17 new screens per day, but the core technology and standards are almost all "subject to foreign technology".
AET's new LED technology as the core of the movie screen and processor system, breaking this bottleneck. "First, this is our fully autonomous, iterative upgrade of the technology system; second, LED projection is also a new innovative film giant screen technology that is different from projection technology - both of which will bring great potential to the 'next generation' of the domestic film industry to explore", industry experts said that the really powerful innovation must be first autonomous, and then the next generation: the progress of the AET film projection system is such a "groundbreaking" breakthrough.
At present, the first "next generation" change brought about by LED movie screens is that the 3D picture no longer has to "lose half" brightness. The industry believes that this is a "bottom line" support for the combination of the "metacosm" and the film industry. At the same time, the next generation of film projection system must have "larger, more differentiated screens and higher ultra-high resolution represented by 8K". At present, AET's LED display technology, based on modular splicing, fully meets the display needs of unlimited screen screens and various special curved structures, and the application of mini and micro LED technology can meet ultra-high-definition applications from 100 inches to tens of meters, hundreds of meters of giant screens, 8K, and even far more than 8K resolution.
At the same time, AET's new projection technology system is also a "low-carbon environmental protection" program. The BOB LED movie screen with the co-negative drive scheme consumes as little as 1000W, which is only one-fifth of the power consumption of traditional digital projectors. Meet the needs of the eco-friendly and "double carbon" concept of future film projection systems.
It is precisely these "technical advantages" that make LED movie screens more comfortable in dealing with future film and television experience innovations. This also makes the breakthrough of AET's film projection products not only have the realistic "domestic cinema market is no longer necked by foreign technology cards" and the "economic significance" of local projection technology and equipment going global, but also have the pioneering future significance of "competing for the new standard of the cultural position of the future film industry" and "breaking the form and value ceiling of the existing audiovisual experience system".
The mainland's "14th Five-Year Plan" China Film Development Plan mentions that it is necessary to focus on the research of technologies and equipment such as cinema LED screens with independent intellectual property rights, seize the commanding heights of technology, and break the monopoly of foreign technology - this has been realized in January 2022 in advance in the hands of AET. But this is by no means the end.
In the past ten years, the road that AET has traveled is to continuously make the impossible possible: starting from a small self-created enterprise, constantly breaking the monopoly and blockade of LED display technology by international giants, from backwardness to go hand in hand, and then to today's comprehensive leadership, AET brings to the industry is "indomitable innovation and transcendence". It is believed that the AET movie screen and processor system through the Hollywood DCI certification, is only an intermediate node in the progress of its film projection equipment, the future AET display of new technology, will inevitably bring more different surprises and more powerful strength to the national film industry.