UFO Moviez expansion spree, Bollywood Digital Cinema...(but) it's MPEG4 technology

According to The Hindi Business Line, UFO Moviez (a subsidary of Apollo International) intends on rolling out digital cinema into 2,000 screens by 2008. The company plans to invest invest close to $40 million for said rollout. 

Acording to Raaja Kanwar, Vice-Chairman and Director, UFO Moviez, the expansion is not restricted to India:  "We plan to be present in around 1,000 screens in India by March 2007, and in 1,000 screens outside India. As far as the international foray is concerned, we would be mostly looking at markets which have a large segment of NRI population."

In August it was reported that the company had acquired a 51 percent stake in susidary DG2L Technologies.  This enabled UFO Moviez to acquire worldwide rights to MPEG 4 cinema.  As blogger Pilgrim of Digital Cinema Matters put it when posting on the August buy out: "I like the term "near-2K", which I guess means 1920x1080 standard full HD resolution, not to mention the exclamation mark, which is not something you see often in US digital cinema press releases."

According to a Moneycontrol India, this development will enable the largest unified digital cinema chain in the world.  From the piece:

"India is on the forefront of the digital cinema revolution and with this deal bringing together the two titans of this revolution UFO Moviez, the world's largest integrated digital cinema network and Chennai based Pyramid Saimira Theatres Limited (PSTL) for the digitization of 1000 (PSTL) theatres over the next three years all over India will create the largest integrated digital cinema chain in the world. UFO Moviez shall be providing end to end digital cinema solutions for the theatres in the Pyramid Saimira chain at a cost of Rs.150 Crores."

and

"Mr. Sanjay Gaikwad, Executive Director/CEO, UFO India Pvt. Ltd. said, "We anticipate that this tie up with Pyramid group will chart the way for the digital revolution happening in the field of cinema exhibition. A single integrated chain of 1000 digital cinemas all over India will provide producers and distributors a unique opportunity for saturated wide spread release in the week of release itself. Worldwide, there is tremendous excitement about this technology which is being hailed as the next great leap in film distribution and exhibition"."