Chile. Christie announced that it has been chosen by Hoyts Chile, the exhibition chain belonging to the Chilefilms Group, to digitize its 127 35-millimeter rooms distributed in 23 complexes throughout the country. The agreement includes the installation of Christie Solaria Series digital cinema projectors, the Christie Avias-TMS cinema management system and the Christie Vive Audio sound solution.
For this process of deployment of digital cinema, Hoyts Chile held a private technology tender, in which it invited the most prominent suppliers in the industry. "We finally selected Christie because its commercial offer was the most complete, attractive and the most aggressive," said Juan Carlos Arriagada Mons, general manager of Cinecolor Chile, a division of the Chilefilms Group that provides technology services for all units of the group.
Hoyts Chile has a long business relationship with Christie. In fact, in mid-June 2012, the color correction/projection rooms of Cinecolor – the image, sound and film laboratory post-production division of the Chilefilms Group present in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile – were equipped with Christie CP2220 projectors.
Christie will supply Hoyts Chile with a variety of DLP Cinema CP2215, CP2220 and CP2230 projectors, as well as its Christie Avias-TMS Cinema Management System (TMS) software application, which allows exhibitors to centrally control and organize all the projection operations of a multiplex cinema.
In addition, Hoyts Chile will equip three of its rooms with the innovative Christie Vive Audio cinematic sound solution, which it will use together with the leading immersive audio platform Dolby Atmos. "Christie invited us to several demonstrations of Vive Audio technology, where we were able to systematically witness and measure the extraordinary distribution of sound pressure throughout the audience, which substantially improves the intelligibility of dialogues (with respect to cone-based speaker systems) and the uniform distribution of sound in the room, reducing a large part of the rebounds that generate interference," said Juan Carlos Arriagada Mons, of Cinecolor Chile.
The deployment of Hoyts Chile, which is being carried out through a Virtual Print Fee (VPF) agreement with GDC Technology, began in January 2014 and is expected to end in November this year. The operation also includes Christie's digitization of the new rooms that Hoyts Chile plans to develop in 2015 and 2016, which could reach 30 screens.
