Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner Buy US Art-house Cinema Chain

It is with great interesting that we see that Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner have bought Landmark Theatres, America’s largest chain of 54 art-house cinemas which are scattered over fourteen states.
They both came into the public eye when they sold an innovative webcasting company, broadcast.com, that they had founded in 1995, to Yahoo! in 1999 for $5.7 billion. Following that avalanche of cash, Cuban went to buy the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, found High Definition TV specialist HDNet and co-found 2929 Entertainment with Wagner.

HDNet two 24/7 networks, HDNet and HDNet Movies, produces and televises more hours of original HDTV entertainment, news and sports programming than any other network.

2929 Entertainment is a vehicle for movie production and, following its November 2001 purchase of Rysher Entertainment, holds substantial film and television programming library, including various rights to shows including “Sex and the City”. It is also currently in post-production on two films including “Godsend” staring Robert DeNiro.

The Landmark Theatres chain has been for sale since 2001, languishing as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The financial terms of the purchase, which is scheduled to close in October, have not been disclosed.

Why does this make an interesting deal?

Digital cinema has held promise for a long time, but has effectively stalled.

The cinema theatre owners are not willing to pay for the digital projectors, as they say the margin that the make on showing films is so slim (the reasons the cite for the necessity for popcorn sales) that they are not able to invest in the equipment. They also point out that it is the film distributors that will gain most benefit from the drastically reduced film distribution costs – physical copies of the film, at a cost of around $3000 each, do not have to be made, nor to they have to be transported to each of the cinemas.

The film distributes say it is not for them to pay for the equipment, as this is the responsibility of the theatre owners. It is also widely believed that they have very little will to digitally distribute their content, as content protection schemes haven’t been decided upon.

The excitement of d-cinema is not just about showing blockbuster films, but the ability to economically distribute small, independent film and other video content that would not normally be shown at as cinema, such as music or sporting events – enabling cinema to become something different.

Now they have the theatre chain, Wagner said they can now take movies from production to the screen with no outside interference – “We think this acquisition provides a unique opportunity to make a significant impact in the art and independent film, HDTV production and digital exhibition communities.”

Together this collection of companies not only have the content, technical savvy, strategic vision and the money to make this possible, but they are run by people who are keen to shake things up. This could be the kind of competition that the film companies need to make them sit up, stop the current stalemate and move up a gear or two in realising digital cinema. We wait with baited breath.

Landmark Theatres

HDNet

2929 Entertainment

Gateway Becomes Top US Seller of Plasma TVs

Gateway Inc. has become America’s top seller of plasma screen TVs to consumers, surpassing Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and other traditional industry leaders.

Previously only known as a direct-sales PC seller, they started selling their first thin television,
a 42-inch Enhanced Definition (ED) Plasma TV, last November and by June this year they held a 28 percent market share of major consumer electronics retailers.

They plan to expand their current six thin screens offering, which range from 17 inches through to 50 inches, before the christmas season.

ReplayTV creator launches new HiDef digital media device

pRoku Labs have for the last year been quietly developing products that connect to High-Definition TV’s and their first device, the Roku HD1000, launches today. They claim it is the first digital media player to be designed for high-definition televisions and with a price tag of $499, Roku is targeting the high-end consumer, those already spending $3,000 or more on an HDTV set.

The HD1000 can play photo slideshows, video or music files from its front mounted built-in memory card slots (CompactFlash, MMC, SD, Memory Stick or SmartMedia) or, using either its built-in 10/100 Ethernet or optional WiFi adaptor, can play media files streamed from a PC or Mac.

You will have noticed that this is a recall only device – it has no ability to record. Many would expect that this device would come with a hard drive onboard, but perhaps because of the extensive and eventually fatal attention that ReplyTV got from its ability to record programs and skip adverts, this has been left for a later product.

Roku is trying a novel approach to encourage owners of large High-Def screens to treat them as picture frames or as windows to alternative location. To this end they are selling $69 memory cards filled with classic paintings, nature and aquarium images.

By keeping their overheads to a minimum, the company would break even by selling 10,000 units, but hopes to become profitable by selling at least 20,000 units within a year. Clearly a small market currently. They hope to gain additional income by its software to other set-top box and television makers and given the HD100 is based on an open Linux-based platform, they hope to encourage third-party developers to build applications for it using the published API.

Roku is lead by Anthony Woods, the creator of ReplayTV. ReplayTV was the first consumer grade hard disk video recorder to come to market, launching in 1999, a few months prior to the more widely known TiVo. Roku labs is not to be confused with Roku Technologies who have been developing peer to peer technologies.

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