SmartJog has announced that French theatre chain, Europalaces, the owner of Gaumont and Pathe cinemas, has signed an agreement for the purchase and deployment of its high capacity SmartJog Digital Cinema Central Library Servers.
The first phase of deployment was recently completed to 33 sites in France, with planned Phase 2 to start shortly. While SmartJog has been deploying its Libraries since last year to theatres in France, Europalaces is the largest chain to commit to a substantial rollout in Europe. Over 65 theatres and 400 digital screens are currently connected to the SmartJog delivery platform. With this major deployment into Europalaces theatres in France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, the TDF Pan-European Digital Cinema Network, a secure satellite and fiber delivery service operated by TDF subsidiaries, SmartJog and Media Broadcast, will grow to more than 200 theatres by the end of 2009.
SmartJog‘s Digital Cinema Central Library Server is the only hardware on the market which is capable of storing very large amounts of data and receiving Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) via satellite and fiber. This agreement will enable Europalaces to receive all its digital content via SmartJog. The Central Library Server, which combines more than 12 Terabytes of storage with central management features, is backed by a 5-year warranty and 24/7 remote system monitoring via terrestrial connection. Upon arrival of DCPs in the library server, automatic checks are performed to ensure the integrity of the files and DCPs can be automatically ingested into the local digital cinema playback servers or theatre management system (TMS). Content can also be loaded locally from a physical medium or via an internal network. A secure and easy-to-understand web interface is available for the management of deployed Central Library Servers. The theatres that were part of the first phase of deployment, are already electronically receiving trailers and pre-show material from Mediavision, the leading cinema advertising company in France.
