Digital cinema in China: unstoppable takeoff

If there is a market for digital cinema that is proving unstoppable, it is the Chinese one. Companies like Barco have sold more than 1,300 projectors so far this year compared to just over 200 installed as a whole until the beginning of 2009.

Of the 1,500 projectors that a company like Barco has supplied to China, more than 1,300 correspond to sales in 2009. These figures give an idea of ​​the takeoff that digital cinema is experiencing in the Asian country. Among the Chinese groups that are betting the most on digital technology, China Film Group, Stellar Megamedia and Heng Dian stand out, companies that in 2009 have installed Barco DMD platforms ranging from 0.98 to 1.2”.

Important projects

In the case of China Film Group/TA Digital Cinema Development, one of the most important agents in the sector and the only importer of foreign films, it has installed 150 Barco DP 2000 and 20 DP 3000 projectors. On behalf of Stellar Megamedia Group, the largest private company in the sector with thirty subsidiaries involved in the construction of new theaters, channel management and content production,... the orders to Barco have involved a hundred DP projectors 1200, 2000 and 3000. Heng Dian Film Entertainment, a Chinese company focused on the production of television series and investment in production, has also acquired a hundred of the same models previously mentioned.

Sichuan Pacific Cinema, promoted by Sichuan Provincial Cinema Company and China Film Group Corporation, has purchased sixty DP 2000s from Barco, while Beijing ZuoAnFeng Cinema Investment Management, specializing in luxury theaters in the capital, has invested in fifty projectors of the same model. Another fifty projects, DP 2000, have been sold by Barco to Guangdong Film and the same number of projects, DP1200 and 2000, have been sold to Xiaoxiang Film Group.

These figures show that in digital cinema, as in many other magnitudes in this country, in China everything is done in a big way...