D-Cinema

Be careful how you talk about this, it is in its infancy and is only around 150 cinemas in the UK presently. We are interested in it more in how it will affect the future!!


Digital cinema refers to the use of digital technology to distribute and project motion pictures. A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector. Digital cinema is distinct from high-definition television and in particular, is not dependent on using television or HDTV standards, aspect ratios, or frame rates. Digital projectors capable of 2K resolution began deploying in 2005, and since 2006, the pace has accelerated.

Digital cinemas can deliver live broadcasts from performances or events. For example, there are regular live broadcasts to movie theaters of Metropolitan Opera performances.

In China, an E-Cinema System called "dMs" was established on June 2005, and is used in over 15000 screens spread across China's 30 provinces. dMS estimates that the system will expand to 40000 screens in 2009

The UK had Europe's first DCI-compliant fully digital multiplex cinemas. Odeon Hatfield and Odeon Surrey Quays (London) have a total of 18 digital screens and were both launched in February 2007. There are now around 150 digital cinemas, some Odeon, Vue and Cineworld and some independent 'art house' cinemas such as

Kino

Here is a really good link to DLP Texas Instruments the biggest D- cinema supplier in the UK

This link explains really well the advantages to D- Cinema

Chicken Little from Disney, with its experimental release of the film in digital 3D, increased the number of projectors using the 2K format. Several digital 3D films surfaced in 2006 and several prominent filmmakers have committed to making their next productions in stereo 3D. Bolt is the latest film to be released as a digital film and the 3D version was released before the normal one.

Savings in distribution
Digital distribution of movies has the potential to save money for film distributors. A single film print can cost around £84 (£20,979 for a 1-time print of an 80-minute feature), so making 4,000 prints for a wide-release movie might cost £3.5 million.) In contrast, at the maximum 250 megabit-per-second data rate (as defined by DCI for digital cinema), a typical feature-length movie could fit comfortably on an off the shelf 300 GB hard drive—which sell for as little as £50 and can even be returned to the distributor for reuse after a movie's run. With several hundred movies distributed every year, industry savings could potentially reach £1 billion or more.

An added incentive for exhibitors is the ability to show alternative content such as live special events, sports, pre-show advertising and other digital or video content. Some low-budget films that would normally not have a theatrical release because of distribution costs might be shown in smaller engagements than the typical large release studio pictures. The cost of duplicating a digital "print" is very low, so adding more theaters to a release has a small additional cost to the distributor. Movies that start with a small release could scale to a much larger release quickly if they were sufficiently successful, opening up the possibility that smaller movies could achieve box office success previously out of their reach.

Greater protection for content
A last incentive for copyright holders for digital distribution is the possibility of greater protection against piracy. With traditional film prints, distributors typically stagger the film's release in various markets, shipping the film prints around the globe. In the subsequent markets, pirated copies of a film (i.e. a cam) may be available before the movie is released in that market. A simultaneous worldwide release would mitigate this problem to some degree. Simultaneous worldwide releases on film have been used on The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Mission: Impossible III amongst others. With digital distribution, a simultaneous worldwide release would not cost significantly more than a staggered release.

Costs
On the downside, the initial costs for converting theaters to digital are high: up to £150,000 per screen or more. Theaters have been reluctant to switch without a cost-sharing arrangement with film distributors. Recent negotiations have involved the development of a Virtual Print License fee which the studios will pay for their products which allows financiers and system developers to pay for deployment of digital systems to the theaters, thus providing investors a certain payback.
While a theater can purchase a film projector for US$50,000 and expect an average life of 30–40 years, a digital cinema playback system including server/media block/and projector can cost 3–4 times as much, and is at higher risk for component failures and technological obsolescence. Experience with computer-based media systems show that average economic lifetimes are only on the order of 5 years with some units lasting until about 10 years before they are replaced.[citation needed]
Archiving digital material is also turning out to be both tricky and costly. In a 2007 study, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences found the cost of storing 4K digital masters to be "enormously higher - 1100% higher - than the cost of storing film masters." Furthermore, digital archiving faces challenges due to the insufficient temporal qualities of today's digital storage: no current media, be it optical discs, magnetic hard drives or digital tape, can reliably store a film for a hundred years, something that properly stored and handled film can do.