After the dust settles on the sale of Shaw Brothers Pictures, the shock to the Hong Kong industry is very huge.

"The pattern has completely changed!" After Zou Wenhuai, the boss of Golden Harvest, saw the news, he walked back and forth in the office anxiously for more than half an hour, and it was difficult to calm down.

"The new entrepreneurship department is finally doing a movie theater line!" Lei Juekun, the owner of the Golden Princess Cinema Line, also had a bit of a headache, "I knew that it was better to promise Lin Qi to introduce his digital projection system than Lin Qi to enter the theater by himself!"

However, soon these cinema chains began to breathe a sigh of relief, because the Shaw Brothers cinema line after the acquisition was tossing blindly.

Generally, as a business with relatively large asset investment, cinema operators will not easily change the layout and equipment of cinemas.

After Lin Qi bought the assets of the Shaw Brothers cinema line, he began to make drastic adjustments to the cinema line. Not only the replacement of seats, air conditioning and other equipment, but also the projection system is also moving closer to the digital projection system. In the future, the Shaw Brothers Cinema Line will retain only a few movie theaters and continue to use film copy screening. The rest of the cinemas show only digital copies.

Such a radical approach has puzzled some people in the industry in Hong Kong.

After all, digital cinema projection systems are so advanced that converting film to hard disk copies is an additional expense for some film investors.

The Shaw Brothers Cinema Line, which converts most of its cinema chains into digital copies, naturally cannot show traditional film films. Such an approach, once the film source can't keep up, will only make the business of the movie theater chain plummet.

Some veterans of the new venture film and television group also persuaded Lin Qi to move forward slowly.

"Boss, we are all aware of the advantages of digital cinema. But...... The pace of transformation is still too fast, and the digital film source can't keep up!" Huang Xizhao said to Lin Qiquan.

But Lin Qi flatly refused: "It can't be slow! It must be fast, and it is better that two-thirds of the cinemas in the Shaw Brothers cinema chain do not make money, and it is not possible to slow down the transformation of the digital cinema chain." Not only do we transform ourselves, but we also need to use our business results to attract more friends to follow up on the transformation! Film makes numbers, although it is an extra expense, but we now have at least 18 cinemas in Hong Kong that are digital cinemas. If a movie invests several millions, and then adds 500,000 yuan of glue to magnetization, and converts it into a digital copy of hard disk storage, it is not expensive. What's more, transcoding to VCD also requires conversion to digital format, and the digital cinema broadcast format is only more high-definition!"

In fact, Shaw Brothers Cinemas is not just a transition from a traditional film projection system to a digital projection system. Moreover, at the same time, it is still a single-hall theater to be cut into a multiplex theater.

Originally, a single-hall theater could only show one movie in a cinema. After a movie hits the streets, the attendance rate of the cinema may hit the streets in the short term.

However, after being cut into multiple halls, 27 cinemas are expected to increase the number of screens to more than 100.

Although the number of seats decreases as a single hall is divided into multiple rooms.

Originally, the number of seats in Hong Kong for the Shaw Brothers cinema line was about 35,000 people. With a ticket price of 10 yuan, all movie theaters are full, and 350,000 yuan can be charged. 5 screenings a day are full, and theoretically the daily turnover can reach 1.4 million yuan.

The size of the audience seats in the cinema chain is not inferior to that of any of its peers in Hong Kong.

After the multi-hall is changed to a single-hall hall, the number of seats will be reduced by about 25,000. The number of potential audiences that can be accommodated has been reduced a lot.

However, Lin Qi clearly knows that multiplex theaters are the mainstream business model of cinemas in the future. Because, the multi-hall model can show multiple movies at the same time, avoiding suppressing a single movie, and the box office hit the street, which will affect the performance of the entire theater chain.

……

"Mr. Lin, the latest data report shows that the sales of cinemas have shrunk somewhat. Moreover, after the failure of Sony's acquisition of Shaw Brothers Films, it is still not giving up on the Hong Kong film market, and recently bought out the distribution rights of more than 20 new films that have been released recently. These new films, all of which are film copies, will only be shown in traditional theaters, and insist on not being digitally transcoded. Huang Xizhao's face was a little ugly, "Except for "FSN", which can currently bring 300,000 box office to Shaw Brothers, other movie theaters have less than 50,000 yuan per day. ”

"How does the attendance rate of the movie theater that also screens 'FSN' compare to our digital cinema?" Lin Qi asked.

"Of course, the attendance rate of digital cinemas is higher!" Huang Xizhao said excitedly, "Because, the clarity of the digital format of "FSN" is at least twice as clear as that of traditional cinemas of competitors!

"The success of FSN shows that higher definition is the direction of cinema development! And traditional film films are already difficult to continue to achieve higher definition, so why not transform into digital cinemas!" Lin Qi affirmed.

Difficulties encountered in the short term.

Lin Qi didn't take it seriously, he mastered the core technology of digital cinema in the palm of his hand, at least more than 10 years ahead of the projection technology of the current cinema!

The global film market only began to advance digital cinema around 2000.

At that time, the 2K standard was gradually introduced. Later, 4K, 8K, and even 3D digital cinema began to be introduced in the cinema market.

In terms of 3D technology, the new entrepreneurship department is also developing it, and the traditional red and blue 3D is of course not good. The Department of New Entrepreneurship is developing 3D technology similar to IMAX giant screen cinema technology. But this kind of giant screen theater is not very mature even in the 21st century, so for the time being, Lin Qi does not plan to be too aggressive.

The digital cinema technology was first promoted, and then a small number of cinemas were selected to build 3D giant screens.

Of course, in the early stage of the promotion of any new technology, it needs the support of the majority of manufacturers, otherwise, without market support, it will be very embarrassing.

Just like recent digital cinema technology, most traditional filmmaking is still film, not digital copies.

After the film copy is converted to digital, it can be shown in digital cinema. But after all, the clarity at the beginning has been limited, and it will not be clearer than the source produced by a real digital HD device!

Therefore, the glue-to-magnetic film source does not have many advantages over the traditional cinema screening source.

Only high-definition movies that are truly produced with digital equipment can the projection quality be guaranteed!

"Mr. Lin, don't worry, now that the overall situation has been decided, Sony is just dying, and sooner or later it will roll out of the Hong Kong market by itself. ”

Huang Xizhao is not very worried, Sony does not have many roots in Hong Kong, and now its sudden entry into film distribution is just a-stirring stick. The consequence of this is that Sony itself does not make money, so, after a long time, Sony itself will definitely retreat.

Lin Qi fell into thinking, the impact of Sony's actions, for now, although it is not big, but it is definitely not meaningless.

At least reminded Lin Qi that the technology is too advanced, and sometimes, it is also a flaw!

Of course, this flaw may be fatal to players with only a few hundred million capitals, and it will bring down small players!

However, Lin Qi is a big player with hundreds of billions of capital, and if he engages in this kind of business of hundreds of millions and billions, even if he loses money for ten or twenty years, he can afford to lose money. As long as he insists, as long as he can afford to lose, no one in this market can beat him!