A couple of years ago some industry pundits forecast digital cinema would by now have rolled over traditional 35mm film projection. However, worldwide, there are currently only 35 true D-cinema auditoriums – theatres that digitally project movies stored on a hard drive, offering image quality that meets audience expectation.

Famous Players’ Paramount Toronto and Vancouver SilverCity Riverport theatres boast two of these D-cinemas. The systems are not to be confused with the ones used to show WWF satellite events and pre-show advertising at Famous Players theatres across the country. The high-end projectors in these D-cinemas employ Texas Instruments’ proprietary Digital Light Processing technology to ensure faithful picture display.

A number of manufacturers have joined in the D-cinema gold rush. Kodak, the perceived last bastion of all things photochemical, states that it is in development on digital projectors that will be ‘twice as good as any other,’ while many people, including David Polny, Famous Players’ VP of national technical services and operations, believe the technology is already there. And while Kodak is testing anti-piracy software to ensure digital data is not intercepted, Polny believes that digitized movies, which each require a five-hour download over 18 to 20 disks, ‘are fairly well protected by the distributors.’ (The digital streams can also potentially be sent via satellite or fibre optics.)

Famous Players has been offering digital projection for three years, with Shrek, Final Fantasy, Hearts in Atlantis, Monsters Inc. and Ocean’s Eleven having recently been exhibited that way. A movie remains in one of the D-cinemas for as long as it is popular, averaging out to about 10 titles per year. The theatre chain informs the public about digitally projected films in its advanced advertising.

Exit polls indicate moviegoers have responded positively to digital presentations, according to Mike Levi, the Georgia-based president of manufacturer Digital Projection, a subsidiary of Imax Corporation. ‘In fact,’ he adds, ‘there are many viewers now who are specifically selecting digital auditoriums.’

Benefits to exhibitors include an end to print degradation and the transportation of hefty film canisters, and greater flexibility in terms of what kind of content can be displayed within a multiplex’s various auditoriums and when. So, then, why has the adoption of D-cinema been so slow?

‘The DLP systems are probably in the $300,000 mark from setup, beginning to end,’ Polny explains. ‘With no film delivery charges and no creation of film product, the studios and distributors are really the [financial beneficiaries]. For us to output that type of funding for what we’re doing right now – and we’ve been running 35mm stock for 80 years with little or no problem – there has to be more initiative, a little more candy at the end for us.’

Until the investment model makes more sense for exhibitors, Polny says Famous Players’ D-cinemas, a joint venture with Texas Instruments, exist primarily as a test run. Part of the current dialogue among exhibitors, studios and manufacturers also centres on the adoption of a standard projection

format, which will impact whether or not the industry will be monopolized by one system.

‘Everybody has to be comfortable that if they invest in that technology, the standard won’t change two or three years later,’ says Levi. ‘Hollywood would want to strike one type of digital ‘print’ and know it is compatible with all the display systems around the world.’

Meanwhile, companies such as Technicolor Digital Cinema and Boeing Digital Cinema have recognized the stalemate between studios and exhibitors as a business opportunity. They have approached theatre owners with offers of installing projection systems as well as providing content they have access to, usually by virtue of having performed the digitizing of that content. This evolving business model gives Levi hope.

Over the next six months to two years, he says, ‘we’ll start to see significant numbers of digital systems being employed in the marketplace. I think this year the digital network will expand from dozens of screens to hundreds.’

Polny, on the other hand, is not as optimistic.

‘I don’t think anybody is prepared to put out the cost,’ he says. ‘Everybody is jockeying for position. [The manufacturers] are placing a few systems out there to make it more attractive, but I don’t know if anybody wants to give away free technology – there is intent to sell these projectors and the systems. I don’t see this being the year this is going to break wide open.’

-www.famousplayers.ca

-www.kodak.ca/CA/en/motion

-www.digitalprojection.com