GDC Technology Showcases Cinema Automation System in 20-plex at CineAsia

PRESS RELEASE – Hong Kong, December 10, 2018: GDC Technology Limited, a leading global provider of digital cinema solutions, is showcasing its Cinema Automation CA2.0, a groundbreaking cinema automation system, to motion pictures exhibitors during CineAsia 2018 from December 11 to 13.

The GDC Cinema Automation CA2.0 is the first-ever centralized solution to provide comprehensive automated management of content storage and playback, show scheduling, power supply and screening quality – providing exhibitors the complete solution to save time, energy and cost. CA2.0 incorporates the SCL-series of centralized playback servers capable of streaming content from an ultra-reliable SCL-series server to as many as 30 screens. The SCL-series servers, which are designed with scalability and reliability in mind, offer each auditorium access to a wide assortment of movies from a centralized server without the need of local HDD storage attached to every media server. The SCL-series servers feature the capability to customize the content repository based on the number of screens (from 4 to 30) and the number of movie titles (up to a few thousands DCPs) to be stored and streamed to all the auditoriums. With the storage capacity increased by up to 51 times when compared to the traditional method, the SCL-series servers, when integrated with CA2.0, streamline content management and leverage machine intelligence to increase efficiency while dramatically reducing the need for human intervention.

First deployed in June 2017, CA2.0 has proven to increase efficiency and quality while significantly reduces operating cost. The automated solution supports the ubiquitous SX-3000 and SX-4000 IMB and the new sixth-generation SR-1000 and SR-1100 media servers. CA2.0 also features sophisticated fail-safe design by machine intelligence to ensure every screening continues in a highly unlikely event of a central server failure. In less than two years, CA2.0 has grown globally with more than 100 multiplex locations installed or committed in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the U.S.

Key Benefits of Cinema Automation CA2.0
The SCL-series of centralized servers is the world’s first solution for cinema that is capable of automating, storing, managing and playback of thousands of movies to as many as 30 screens from a centralized server. The cinema industry has never experienced such significant flexibility and reliability in programming and the complete elimination of the local HDD storage in every screen.

The SCL-series servers mark four major breakthroughs:
• No content ingestion time
• Increases playback reliability by 30 times
• Stores over 51 times more content for each and every auditorium
• Automating, storing, managing and playback of all content from a centralized server

In addition to automating the complex procedure of manually preparing or editing show playlists, CA2.0 incorporates other impressive advances, such as:
• The system intelligently manages equipment power supply and assures screening quality automatically.
• Its sophisticated fail-safe design helps eliminate interruptions by ensuring that every screening continues undisturbed in the highly unlikely event of a central server failure.

“GDC’s mission is to provide solutions for the filmmaker’s artistic vision to be exhibited as they intended. That’s why we constantly listen to our customers to better understand their evolving needs as the industry changes”, said Dr. Man-Nang Chong, founder, chairman and CEO of GDC Technology Limited. “Our goal is to exceed the expectations of exhibitors and content distributors by continually improving and automating cinema operation with our reliable solutions, helping exhibitors cut operating costs and ensuring our products deliver the highest-quality sight and sound experience. CineAsia is the perfect venue to showcase our latest first-to-market products to the industry.”

Live demonstrations of a 20-screen megaplex (the system is capable of scaling to 30-plex cinema) will be staged at the GDC booth #313, Hall 3G in the Hong Kong Exhibition & Convention Centre from December 11 to 13 to showcase this milestone in cinema technology. In addition, GDC will be highlighting other cutting-edge technology solutions including the SR-1000 Standalone Integrated Media Block featuring CineCacheTM, built-in cache memory, allowing content playback to be performed without local HDD storage. This system integrates seamlessly with CA2.0.

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