On Digital Cinema (Score 2)

Do I think that digital projection is a great thing? Yes. Do I belive that one day when you go to see a movie your only choice will be digital? Yes. Will it happen any time soon? Absolutely not.

Right now in the movie industry there is a big commotion about digital cinema. Everyone agrees that it is an increadible technology and everyone belives that it is the way of the future. However the problem is that no one wants to have to pay for it. Right now in the industry there are basically 2 things that are holding up widespread digital projection.

The first hurtle the industry must overcome is the security issue; how do they prevent some punk from stealing their movies? This has been addressed in other threads already and the choices that have been thrown around the industry are as follows:

1. Ship the movie on some sort of digital media to theatres instead of cans of film. Pro: Just as secure as current methods. Con: Not much cheaper than current methods since every screen still has to have an item shipped to it.

2. Send the movie electronically and then store it locally at the theatre. Pro: Expensive to start out with since each theatre will need an extensive network upgrade but VERY cheap over the long run since once the groundwork is layed movie transmission will be virtually free. Cons: "Hackers" could steal the movie during transmission and release the movie on the internet before it opens in the theatres. (gasp!!)

What the industry is waiting for is a way to transmit movies without the need to worry about people tapping in to their system and stealing the movie. Another hurtle they have to overcome is the file transfer method. Sure Titan AE was transfered digitally between coasts perfectly fine but that was just one theatre being sent one movie. What happens when you have thousands of theatres each needing to download 3-4 movies weighing in at a couple of gigs a piece? How many transfer errors do you think there will be? Granted every theatre won't be accessing every movie all at once but it will still be a huge load on any network.

This however can be overcome, network technology is being improved almost daily and there are other options such as splitting the movie up into smaller chunks which are then combined after recieving all of them very much like a rar archive. This also has the added benefit of additional security since someone would need to steal all the parts to the movie in order to watch it. This however is actually not the biggest hurtle the theatre industry needs to overcome before digital projections becomes commonplace.

The real obsticle holding theatres back is the question of who is going to pay for the upgrades to the theatres. The exhibitors (theatre owners) believe that the distributors should pay for the upgrade since they are the ones who will see the immediate benefit from digital distribution. Distributors on the other hand think the exhibitors should pay for the upgrade since it's their theatre. This is the true hurtle that the industry must overcome before digital projection can become feasable, someone can develop the most incredible encription scheme known to man that is uncrackable but it won't make a lick of difference if only 1/20th of the theatres are equipped with digital projection capabilites. However if the distributors and exhibitors can come to a finacing agreement than the securtiy issues would be dealt with quickly by both parties.

Of course these are just the ramblings of an asst. theatre manager with too much time on his hands, so who knows how it will turn out...