CHENNAI: Real Image Media Technologies (P) Ltd. announced today that the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued patent 7,353,270 B2 for the company‘s media and advertising distribution and tracking system (DATS). The Government of India had already issued patent nos. 202969 and 202980 for this system earlier.

The patent was filed in 2001 and covers concept and technology of audio-visual playout devices that are installed at different places and media is downloaded from a central server and scheduled for playout as required. Hence, it applies to most out of home (OOH) advertising applications including signage, cinema halls, kiosks, etc., wherever advertising is distributed across multiple locations as files and centrally controlled with logs being collected and centrally consolidated. This technology is the key part of Real Image‘s OOH digital advertising solutions that are marketed under the brand name QMedia.

To put it simply, this technology helps control digital advertisement and track the number of times it has been played in digital movie theaters or other solutions that use digital audio-video systems that have adopted Real Image DATS technology.

Real Image co-founder Senthil Kumar estimates that another 1000 theaters will convert to digital screening using Real Image solutions over the next one year. He expects 1500 to 2000 screens to adopt DATS in India during that time.

Kumar is also eying the Cas and DTH market. One of the models that he is considering is permitting free or subsidized downloads of movies on the set top box hard disk if the costumer permits download and viewing of advertisements along with the movie. This will help in target advertisement.

Also in the US, Kumar estimates the market for his DATS at 10,000 cinema screens over the next few years once the mandated digitization of all the screens is complete. At present around 4000 screens in the US are digitized.