2016 marked the 25th anniversary of CineEurope, which was held in Barcelona in mid-June. The 29° heat was a nice break from the rain that is the hallmark of a British summer!
A key theme of this year’s show was differentiation, and many companies were asking, “How do we show people that the cinema cannot be compared to home theatre?” Korea’s CJ Group had an answer, but unfortunately our conversation with them had to be ‘off the record’. However, look for some interesting announcements from the company very soon.
Despite the demand to be different, the mood was optimistic, with European cinema performing well last year – taking 24% of the global theatrical market for films (€8.4 billion).
The other topic that dominated the show was laser projection, which has now reached a level of maturity – and cost – that laser projectors are becoming widespread. With that spread comes more awareness of the weaknesses of laser, of course, and solutions to deal with speckle were on everyone’s lips.
We had been at Barcelona’s CCIB, on the shores of the Mediterranean, just a few months earlier for Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S7
