L.C. Concept
LC Concept was a 35 mm film projection sound format, developed in France and released in 1991. It used 5.25" 300 megabyte capacity re-writable magneto-optical disks to hold 4 or 5.1 channels of MUSICAM compressed audio. Two disks were used to hold approximately three hours of sound. The system was not widely adopted with only 20 theatres in France, Belgium, and Switzerland installing the system. The company failed in 1994 due to a lack of funding.
The system was developed by Elisabeth Lochen and Pascal Chedeville. A standard SMPTE timecode printed next to analogue soundtrack on the film print was read by a reader connected to the playback unit kept the playback in sync. The system was tested with a re-release of the Cyrano de Bergerac, and the first commercial release was Until the End of the World. In all around 30 features were released in this format: Basic Instinct (Paul VERHOEVEN), Free Willy (Simon WINCER), Falling Down (Joël SCHUMACHER), Cliffhanger (Reny HARLIN), Back Beat (Ian SOFTLEY), Silent Tongue (Sam SHEPARD), Boiling Point (James B. HARRIS), Heaven and Earth (Oliver STONE), Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul RAPPENAU), L 627 (Bertrand TAVERNIER), The Lover (Jean-Jacques ANNAUD), Until the End of the World (Wim WENDERS), L'accompagnatrice (Claude MILLER), IP 5 (Jean-Jacques BEINEIX), Tous les matins du monde (Alain CORNEAU), Arizona Dream (Emir KUSTURICA), La Belle histoire (Claude LELOUCH), Bitter Moon (Roman POLANSKI).