Digital Cinema : Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This paper considers how the film industry might effect the transition from film to digital product. Using public sources to predict the eventual technological solutions which will prevail is problematic as no independent academic analysis appears to have been carried out. Technology companies are clearly wedded to their own solutions, pointing out flaws in competing technologies while downplaying the shortcomings of their own. Industry wide bodies that have been set up to promote d-cinema or establish standards, understandably tend to avoid taking sides and promote all solutions equally[i]. Rather than contributing further to the debate about the qualities of competing technologies or the creative merits or demerits of digital product, this paper will focus on the search for new business models in an industry wedded for over one hundred years to an analogue process. In the sections which follow it will consider- the strategies of the companies at the forefront of the technology; the financial implications associated with change; and how different territories might adapt in order to accommodate this transition. [i] Anna Wilde Mathews, Digital cinema's time is nearing. Detailed specifications are supposed to be ready early next year. The Wall Street Journal, May 25 2003.