European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 10, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Waiting for movies from the cover is known As the a non theatrical film distribution Market which also includes such Choice venues As airlines prisons and hospitals. The simple and unalterable Bottom line is this the More popular a film is in the mainstream com Mercial Market the longer it generally takes to reach the military circuit. A the Date that we get prints of a movie is almost solely dependent upon when that movie comes off the commercial screens a said Paul Pitcher an cafes theater operations specialist. The studios have Well established contractual relationships with theater chains such As am and Cin culex that have been built up Over decades said Chuck Poffenbarger cafes vice president for food and theater operations. Those contracts generally Call for commercial Heaters a the most important Revenue source for most movies a to show films continuously for an average of two to three months before releasing them to other formats and venues such As the military circuit. A a. A a  a a ".�. A if we had 12-screen multiplex Heaters were willing to pay 90 percent of the film rental fee up front and show films five times a Day for three months straight we could be a part of the commercial Market too a Poffenbarger said. Despite their second rung status cafes and. Amps have made great strides in recent years to Cut the time it takes them to get Pew films once they make their commercial debut. A decade ago delays of three to four months were Standard. Now the Norm is usually measured in  / a a. In the Case of the amps the change is the result of More aggressive negotiations with the studios and the streamlining of film handling procedures which has Cut the time it takes to ship films to the worldwide circuit said . Andersen amps director. Cafes has been  go one step further by developing a breakthrough that has allowed the Exchange service to put films in a handful of overseas Heaters within just a week or two of their stateside a a Columbia Jack Nicholson a Wolf sprang onto the military movie circuit a couple of weeks after its stateside release. Release a the first run program launched in 1986. The program has sparked tensions with owners of some foreign Heaters that show new films in English said Harold Goldberg manager of print control for Universal pictures which distributes Spielberg a films. Films Are often released to the foreign Market a Short time after their . Release a sometimes within Only Days. Some foreign theater owners Are upset about having to compete with the cafes first run program. They say they derive at least part of their Revenue from americans overseas who would rather pay a higher Price to see a film while its still red hot than wait for it to hit the military circuit. According to Goldberg Universal was one of the studios that sympathized to some extent with the foreign theater owners. A we gave cafes a hard time about it for a while but we be changed our stance on that a he said. A we Are now giving them the prints they need for that  cafes officials Are understandably reluctant to say anything that might aggravate tensions. Pitcher would say Only that the programs Success in terms of movie attendance a has won the support of film  a in Europe films on the first run circuit open May Road. Ill the plight of military theater patrons Ever ease and if so by How much and when the answers maybe a Little bit an untold number of years Down the if the regional . Telephone companies have their Way there May come a Day when the shipment of Bulky film reels becomes obsolete discarded in favor of fiber optic cables that can transmit movies digitally Over phones directly to Heaters. Even if fiber optic phone lines become the preferred Means of film distribution there a no reason to believe the studios would upgrade the second rung status of the military movie circuits. But using fiber optic lines for film distribution May still allow the army and air Force Exchange service and the Navy motion picture service to shave the current Gap Between a films initial release arid is debut on the military circuit by eliminating the time it normally takes to ship film reels the pacing Bell Telephone co. Is exploring the a concept. A recent demonstration project with Sony. Corp., Parent of  and tristan studios and an am theater in Southern California was successful enough to warrant a broader Experiment with other studios and Mote Heaters later this summer. Transmitting movies Over fiber optic phone lines involves digitally converting the images to video format similar to the Way video teleconferencing is done. Rich Mizer a member of the technical staff of Pacific Bell s advanced video services division in san Ramon calif., predicted that the Day when movies Are Given Over completely to the digital video format is not far off. A movies today Are being made More and More digitally anyway a he said. Quot the title sequences in Many films for example Are initially done on digital tape and then converted to regular film later in the production  Mizer said the current film reel and projector system is 100 years old and has reached its maximum potential. A a it a not going to get any better a he said. A electronic Cinema is clearly the wave of the  Mizer envisions a huge web of data Banks downloading films to Heaters on request. A Central data base in California might distribute films around the country to local file servers which in turn would feed the films to area Heaters. A a theater would order Schindler a list for 7 p.m., Jurassic Park for 9 p.m., or whatever and the films would be transmitted from the local file server a a Mizer said. The signals would be sent out in a real time a meaning a phone line would be in use for a films entire running time. A for a typical multiplex that shows 10 movies five times a Day that translates into 50 Calls daily to the local file server lasting 90 minutes to two hours each a the kind of phone Bill perhaps Only parents of teen agers can fully appreciate. Mizer admits that Cost is an Issue still lobe resolved. G. A a it la probably end up with the Heaters paying a Flat monthly rate Quot he said. A it  be More expensive than what the Industry now spends on making and distributing prints of films otherwise there would be no incentive to  the idea has its critics who say video technology can t match the standards for film. One such septic is . Andersen director of the Navy motion picture service. Andersen said video technology is a nowhere near ready for use in commercial Heaters because video can to match film in terms of image Resolution brightness and contrast a fall that any Cinema is really Selling is magic that convinces viewers to suspend their disbelief that they re just watching 24 frames a second Flash on a Blank Wall a Andersen said. A anything that detracts from that fantasy a such As reduced image or audio Quality a is  video technology will not come close to current film standards for perhaps 10 to 15 years if not longer he said. But Mizer is confident that video fuelled by the increasing Impact of High definition to technology will exceed current standards for film much sooner than that. A the trials we be run with Sony worked very Well a he said. A new laser projectors Are coming out every Day that improve the brightness and contrast of video images. I think video technology will be better than 35 my film within three to five  Chuck Vinch Page 4 sunday july 10,1994