New Case Study Details Cinemex Implementation of Qube Wire To Streamline Digital Cinema Operations Published on Thursday, September 13, 2018
One of the benefits we have here at Celluloid Junkie is that smart people and innovative companies knock on our doors all the time with products and services for some of the industry's most confounding problems. Writing about such issues and their solutions has proven to be a great way to gain an in-depth knowledge of both.
Compiling a case study on a relatively new service that Cinemex, a leading Mexican theatre chain, has deployed at no financial cost to assist them with specific digital cinema operations is a perfect example. During our recent interview with Rajesh Ramachandran, the President and CTO of Qube Cinema, Inc. we learned a great deal more about one of its current flagship products; Qube Wire.
In part, Qube Wire is a free platform designed to solve one of the industry's self inflicted headaches; the trusted device list (TDL) of secure digital cinema equipment in each venue and the facility list message (FLM) meant to communicate the TDL to approved third parties. The need for such a service is predicated on an industry specified security mechanism that requires a key delivery message (KDM) to unlock digital content on a specific playback device during an assigned period of time.
Though other industries have long since overcome such security obstacles, I have always been fascinated how motion picture exhibitors and distributors declined to adopt a federated global TDL. Instead, the industry is filled with service companies that compile, maintain and fiercely guard their own individual TDLs so that they can be used as a competitive differentiator. So when Qube asked whether I could help them write a case study on a successful implementation of Qube Wire I jumped at the chance provided it could be done from an objective viewpoint. (Full disclosure: I was paid for my services).
To be sure, Qube isn't the only company to offer TDL and KDM services via an extensive platform, Arts Alliance Media and Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema (DTDC) launched a comparable offering in July. However, as I discovered in writing the case study, Cinemex provides a real world instance of such a service in action on a sizable scale. We were given permission to give CJ readers an advance peak at some of what we learned as the study is prepared for publication shorty.
Cinemex Background
Over the last 23 years Cinemex has grown from a single movie theatre in Mexico City to a chain that now operates 2,861 screens in 332 complexes located throughout Mexico. In 2017, the circuit began operations in the United States. Cinemex plans to continue developing its international footprint by moving into the European Union and continuing to expand in the U.S. through its CMX brand, a chain of upscale, luxury cinemas. A team of more than 14,000 employees oversees the company's daily operations.
An Industry-Wide Challenge
For an exhibitor like Cinemex, or of any size frankly, keeping track of digital cinema equipment throughout a circuit is a never-ending chore. Most often there are two playback devices - a server and a projector - for every screen. In November 2017, Cinemex was keeping track of model numbers, serial numbers, software versions and, most importantly, security certificates, for 5234 playback devices (2,695 servers and 2,539 projectors) across its network.
As is often the case with exhibitors, this information was being maintained manually by multiple Cinemex personnel through text documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and similar methods. If a playback device was removed from a theatre or new equipment brought in, records would need to be manually updated and sometimes there was uncertainty about which version of the device list was the most recent. As many theatre operators have discovered in the age of digital cinema, this can become a problem when content service providers request an FLM to make keys for upcoming releases being sent to a specific theatre. Cinemex received such requests on a routine basis and would distribute their device list as a spreadsheet.
Sometimes the wrong key would get delivered to one of the company's multiplexes when equipment had to be moved after the trusted device list had been distributed; a common occurrence in modern day cinemas. Such instances are why content service providers like DTDC and Motion Picture Solutions have begun requesting machine-generated Extended Facility List Messages, as standardized in SMPTE ST 430-16, to be transmitted to them using the FLM-x protocol standardized by SMPZTE ST 430-15. Thus, Cinemex needed to find a way to compile and distribute an accurate FLM for its entire circuit and publish it to multiple service providers through a single FLM-x feed.
In addition, Cinemex required a solution that would centralize the receipt and management of its keys. Originally, content and keys were delivered to a Cinemex theatre, they arrived via hard drive and email respectively. There was no way for a service provider to track or automatically confirm delivery and no way for Cinemex to manage the keys within a complex throughout the playback period. Because keys were being delivered to individual theatre email addresses there was no way for Cinemex personnel to easily recover a key should it go missing and the original email be unavailable without contacting the appropriate service provider to request a replacement key.
These challenges are not unique to Cinemex. Cinema operators around the globe have discovered receiving and managing keys on a theatre-by-theatre basis is rather inefficient and prone to errors.
Implementing A Solution
Cinemex began working with Qube in November of 2017 to implement a pilot of Qube Wire. Cinemex first provided Qube with their multiple facilit
