Wanda to equip 800 new screens with Dolby

Doug Darrow, senior vice-president of the cinema business group at Dolby Laboratories, explains how the Dolby Atmos system works in a Dolby Cinema with a model at the headquarters of Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco. LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY

Wanda Cinema Line, China's largest cinema chain owned by Dalian Wanda Group, will buy 800 units of Dolby digital cinema processors to deploy in all of its new cinema screens in China by the end of 2016.

Dolby Laboratories announced the deal on Wednesday, which includes the Dolby Atmos Cinema Processor CP850 and the Dolby Digital Cinema Processor CP750.

"Dolby has always been a strategic partner to Wanda with its proven track record of providing quality products that deliver high reliability and great performance," said Jack Wang, general manager of Information and Technology Center at Wanda Cinema Line, in the statement. "We are glad to continue to leverage Dolby's strong expertise in cinema audio and further expand our Dolby Atmos screens with the recent orders of the Dolby Atmos Cinema Processor CP850."

The Dolby CP850 supports Dolby Atmos sound technology, which uses scores of speakers combined with software, places and moves sound around, even over head, to bring a realistic and immersive sound experience. Since its introduction in the cinema in 2012, the technology has been embraced by major Hollywood studios.

Dolby's footprint expands in China rapidly with partnership with Wanda, which operates 240 theaters in the country and accounts for approximately 14 percent of China's market share in terms of box office revenue.

Wanda began using Dolby's Atmos sound system in all of its big-screen theaters in 2013 and now China has the most Dolby Atmos locations in the world.

"Our next generation audio format - Dolby Atmos - has more cinemas in the Chinese market than in any other country in the world," Doug Darrow, senior vice-president of the cinema business group at Dolby Laboratories, told China Daily in an earlier interview. "Now we are going to bring the next innovation - Dolby Cinema - to that market and I expect it's going very quickly there as well."

Early this year, Dolby announced that 100 Dolby Cinemas, which feature Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, a vivid laser projection system, will be launched at Wanda Cinema Line over the next five years.

The first of such cinemas is expected to open in China this summer. China will become the world's most deployed country for Dolby Cinema over the next year or two, according to Darrow.

China's film market, growing by around 35 percent a year, is the second-largest in the world and is expected to surpass the US market in 2017. Box office revenue in the country posted $4.8 billion in 2014 and a total of 23,600 screens were recorded in the same year.

"When you bring great technology and great experience into the theatrical space within a market that is huge like that, you see what's happening in China," Darrow said.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com