SM Cinema goes full digital

SM CINEMA, currently the largest film exhibitor in the country with 240 theaters in 44 branches and four IMAX theaters, has innovated the local cinema industry when it opened its first digital theater at The Block in SM City North EDSA three years ago.

This year, most SM Cinema theaters have gone fully digital while some are still undergoing its digital conversion. Edgar Tejerero, senior vice president for West Avenue Theatres Corp., managing arm of SM Cinema, shares that by year 2013, all of SM’s cinemas including the ones that will be built in the interim would be all digital, a testimony to how committed SM Cinema is to bringing the movie industry to the next level.

The digital conversion is made possible through SM Cinema’s collaboration with DCinema which manages the deployment of the Virtual Print Fee (VPF) Agreement in the country.

The Virtual Print Fee (VPF) Agreement is designed to offer financial assistance to movie theater owners by funding the first purchase of the digital cinema equipment. This enables big and small film exhibitors to finance the digitization of their theaters without interest and with lower up-front cost. This program was initiated by six major Hollywood studios.

With the financial subsidy from the VPF Program, DCinema is going to deploy a world-class digital projection system in the country, and is projecting to cover at least 400 screens for digital conversion in the country within the next few years.

Digital Cinema Conversion has shown to have advantages for both theater operators and film producers.