MUMBAI: French theatre chain, Europalaces, the owner of Gaumont and Pathe cinemas, has signed an agreement for the purchase and deployment of SmartJog’s high capacity Digital Cinema Central Library Servers.

The first phase of deployment was recently completed to 33 sites in France, with planned phase 2 to start shortly. While SmartJog has been deploying its libraries since last year to theatres in France, Europalaces is the largest chain to commit to a substantial rollout in Europe. Over 65 theatres and 400 digital screens are currently connected to the SmartJog delivery platform.

With this deployment into Europalaces theatres in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the TDF Pan-European Digital Cinema Network, a secure satellite and fiber delivery service operated by TDF subsidiaries, SmartJog and Media Broadcast, will grow to over 200 theatres by the end of 2009.

This agreement will enable Europalaces to receive all its digital content via SmartJog.

The theatres that were part of the first phase of deployment, are already electronically receiving trailers and pre-show material from Mediavision, the cinema advertising company in France.

"We are happy to provide SmartJog’s Central Library server to Europalaces and look forward to a long working relationship with the company. Europalaces is at the forefront of the digital transition in theatres and is benefiting from the purchase of the most cost-effective and versatile Library solution available in the market today since there is no need to set-up any additional equipment to receive DCPs," said SmartJog director European digital cinema sales Nicolas Dussert.