Digital Changes In Cinema

What are the advantages of digital projection for the consumers?

The big advantage of digital projection is the picture quality. With film, every imperfection gets shown as the 35 mm print passes through the projector, including scratches, fluff, blotches and so forth; not exactly what the director intended for their creative vision.
With a digital projector linked to a server there are no more stray hairs, scratches or dust - just a crystal clear picture.

Why has there been a slow take-up?

It's been a question of agreeing in advance. It's been a consensus building process, which started in 1999 with the first commercial release of Star Wars Episode One.
Since then there has been five years of testing the technology, building a consensus and agreeing the business models and technology to be used, and this has taken longer than most people expected.

Why is 'Hollywood' driving this technological change?

The Hollywood studios are driving this transition because they stand to make enormous savings, which they can pass on to the cinemas themselves.
The most obvious saving is in distribution costs. An average length feature film print costs around £700 ($1,300).
Encoding it and delivering a hard drive to the cinema works out at a fraction of that. In future, the possibility of delivering the movie by satellite or over the net has got the bean counters salivating.
One of the other great costs to the movie industry is piracy, which Hollywood claims has cost it $6bn (£3.2bn).
Distributing movies digitally means they can be encrypted before they even leave the studios, and then unlocked by software at the cinemas themselves.
Tinseltown's films could get more showings, too. Digital movies can be streamed from the server to different screens at the same time; or alternatively a variety of movies can be shown on the same screen throughout the course of a day.
But perhaps the most exciting thing for the cinemas is that digital projection gives them a flexibility they could only have dreamt when they had to use film.

What does digital projection offer in the way of the "future" for cinemas?

In truth 3D never really went away - it has been the staple of the big-screen Imax experience for years.
Imax uses two film projectors and two reels of film to fool our brains into thinking we are seeing 3D.
That process has been too expensive for regular cinemas to contemplate, but digital projectors make it affordable for the first time.
There is now a real buzz about 3D; there are seven new 3D movies slated for release in the coming year.
With technology available to recreate old classics, as well as show sporting events, in 3D there is a real feeling that 3D is finally coming of age.
Even so, places like the Hollywood entertainment museum put these developments in perspective. Technology is important, but it is just one part of a bigger picture.
Digital cinema, although it is being seen as a milestone on par with colour and sound, is still at its heart just cinema.
Ultimately it is the finished product, the movies themselves, which will ensure we keep coming back for more.