After Jurassic Park, it didn't take Digital Theater Systems very long to establish that DTS was the highest quality, most reliable and affordable digital sound system available in the world. In three years, the contribution of DTS to the motion picture industry was recognised in the form of a Scientific and Engineering Award for 1996 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And since then, DTS has been crossing new frontiers as a matter of course, its most recent foray abroad being the Chinese market.

Introducing an exciting new format in India
In 1994, Real Image Pvt. Ltd., a company known for its successful introduction of Avid's non-linear editing systems in India, began to sense that the time was right to bring digital cinema sound to the country. Although questions were raised about India's readiness for digital cinema sound, they did not abandon their conviction, and in the course of their research found that the DTS format was very successful in the US market. Says Senthil Kumar, "the idea of using a reliable medium like the CD-ROM locked to the film by timecode seemed really ideal for Indian conditions. In April that year, Real Image presented a convincing business plan and market analysis to Bill Neighbors, then President and General Manager of DTS.

Right at the outset, Real Image asked DTS for permission to work on film licensing, mixing and all other production aspects as well as the sales of cinema processors. In effect, they wanted to be DTS in India, not just an equipment distributor. By November 1995, the agreement was concretised through a Letter of Intent, and the strategy to bring DTS to India had been fine-tuned. Real Image decided to first concentrate on its home state, Tamil Nadu.

The introduction of DTS digital sound in India was initially a classic chicken-and-egg situation. theater owners were hesitant to upgrade to a format in which no Indian films had been made, and filmmakers were reluctant to make films with a sound format that theaters were not yet capable of playing back. It was decided that ten DTS units would be bought by Real Image and installed in various theaters in the state, allowing the owners to pay for them when they had the first DTS movie to exhibit. Karuppu Roja was the first Indian film done in DTS, and its trailer soundtrack perfectly demonstrated the versatility, dynamic range and the six channels of DTS sound.

DTS boldly ventures into the Indian market
The gimmicky Karuppu Roja trailer truly swung cinema owners towards DTS sound. It showed them what was possible with this sound format and how much more than mono it could be. While optical stereo is much better than mono, even with SR, it cannot be so dramatically different to the untrained ear as digital can. Karuppu Roja, released in March 1996, received acclamation for its sound but did not fare well at the box office. However, it was followed closely by Indian, another Tamil film, that was also dubbed into Hindi and Telugu. This film did exceedingly well at the box office in all three languages. Apart from having an interesting story, it also had very popular songs and an excellent score by one of India's top film composers, A.R. Rahman. The songs were simply breathtaking in 6-track surround and the audiences loved it.

Abhirami in Chennai became the first theater in India in which Real Image installed DTS. Devi Paradise and AVM Rajeswari quickly followed suit, as did several other theaters all over the state. Then came the first DTS theater outside Tamil Nadu - Bombay's Metro, again with a deal with Nestor D'Souza, the General Manager of the cinema, that he could pay for it when he had the first DTS movie to screen. The trailer of Indian (Hindustani in Hindi) was played at Metro for the benefit of owners of other theaters where this film was to be released in Hindi. Many orders were received for DTS right away. The enlightened distributors for the film in Bombay, Shringar Films, financed many a DTS unit at that time.

The first original Hindi film with DTS sound was Judwaa produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. This film too was a big hit. Some of the notable Hindi films in DTS have been Chota Chetan 3D (first 3D feature film with DTS sound), Koyla, Ziddi, Border, Gupt, Bhai, Ishq, Chachi 420, Kareeb, Satya, Dil Se, Hu Tu Tu (the first Indian film on both Dolby Digital and DTS), Biwi No 1 (released 125 DTS prints), Taal, Hum Saath Saath Hain (released 190 DTS prints) and Takshak. The first original film in Telugu was Master (Oct-97) produced by Allu Arvind, a very enlightened and forward-thinking producer. Since that time Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the state with the largest number of DTS theaters. The number currently stands at about 189.

Overcoming teething trouble
This history of DTS digital theater sound in India would not be complete without a look at some of the problems the format faced due to local conditions. In the initial phase, DTS discs started giving an unusual amount of trouble. The system would often switch to analog in theaters quite randomly. It was some distributors who pointed out to Real Image that the fault was in the labels used on the CDs. It appeared that moisture was getting into the labels and forming little air bubbles that caused eccentricity in the spin of the disc and consequently data errors. Direct writing or print was then used on the discs instead of labels. This has brought the disc error rate down to virtually zero.

Real Image also found timecode reading problems at many rural theaters. The DTS system was not able to read timecode reliably even though the print conformed to all specification. This turned out to be because of the mains frequency being lower than the allowed tolerance of +/-2%. DTS quickly came up with a software and hardware modification that allowed DTS units to read timecode with a tolerance of 10%. And Real Image modified all the units in the field that were giving trouble. Today, of course, such a problem no longer exists.

It's not only in times of trouble that DTS, Inc. has come up with a solution. DTS in India is directly looked after by Jim Murray, Director of World Wide Sales at DTS, Inc. Jon Kirchner, currently the Executive Vice-President, DTS Inc., and Andrea Nee, Vice-President, DTS Cinema Group, USA, also interact with Real Image regularly on policy and marketing issues. Jim visits India about twice each year and his understanding of different cultures and his wide experience in exhibition have been invaluable at difficult times.

Establishing a dealer network
Real Image knew that it was not possible to cover the entire country without the support of a well-established dealer network. Right at the start, the company began to work through a network of dealers, both large and small. Some of the best companies in this industry agreed to work with Real Image to make DTS a success. The network includes some of the most established companies in the industry such as Cinerama, Cinecita and GM Audio.

Spreading DTS technical expertise
To ensure that all of the field people knew the intricacies of the DTS processor, its installation and troubleshooting, DTS and Real Image organised a workshop in Chennai. Mike Skrzat from DTS and KM Suryanarayanan from Real Image discussed all aspects of the DTS-6D system with over 30 engineers from all parts of the country. Similar workshops have been held at Chennai and Mumbai with a special emphasis on the new DTS-6AD processor and about 50 theater engineers participated.

More theaters and films, month after month
Without a doubt the growth of DTS in India has been rapid. From no theaters in Jan 1996 to 623 theaters in June 2001 is an average growth of over 125 theaters a year. And Real Image continues to record a growth of about ten theaters each month. This kind of growth was made possible by a continuous marketing effort, which included a long and trail-blazing road show. It is heartwarming to know that the number of DTS digital theaters in India is vastly greater than the number of theaters with just optical stereo in the country. India has truly been able to leapfrog a generation - just as Real Image had hoped and dreamed.

DTS movie releases, especially in Hindi, thus open in quite a large number of DTS theaters, usually 50 to 100 out of a total of 150 to 300 release theaters for a movie. And, of course, this number continues to grow. Rajshree Picture's Hum Saath Saath Hain, one of the biggest releases to date opened in about 190 DTS theaters, beating the previous record of 125 DTS theaters that Biwi No. 1 had set only a few months before.

The number of DTS films made in India also continues to grow rapidly. Without counting dubbed versions, there were 6 DTS films in 1996, the first year of DTS in India. This was followed by 22 DTS films in 1997, 26 in 1998, 54 in 1999, 82 in 2000 and 26 till June 2001. Including dubbed versions of films in each language, we have had 85 DTS films in Hindi, 86 in Telugu, 55 in Tamil, 12 in Kannada, 14 in Malayalam and 5 in English. That's 257 DTS Indian films so far.

Of course, these numbers don't include dubbed versions of Hollywood films at all. All of the major studios have been very supportive of DTS in India and any film that has had DTS in its original version has been released here in DTS in all its dubbed versions. Fox was the first studio to take advantage of the multilingual capabilities of DTS. For the release of the Star Wars Trilogy, it ran Hindi and English versions in several theaters with the same print and different disc sets for each show. Thus in pockets where there was less demand for the English version, there would be a morning English show followed by three shows in Hindi. Real Image hopes that more people take advantage of this capability of DTS.

What the future holds for DTS in India
"We are happy to inform you that our gate collections have gone up by 25% to 30% after upgrading our theater with this wonderful format named DTS. The greatest thing about DTS is that the quality of sound remains the same in spite of the wear and tear of the prints", says MC Bobby of Nice Movie House in Kottayam, Kerala. This opinion has been echoed time and again by exhibitors in every corner of India. There's no doubt at all that DTS digital theater sound has come to stay. While Real Image is extremely pleased with the performance of DTS in the country, there's no fear of resting on one's laurels. As Jim Murray put it, "there's still a long way to go"...