My View - The Big Picture

My View - The Big Picture:
"The year began strong with a major breakthrough for digital cinema when Christie Digital Systems announced in January that it had installed a CP2000 2K projector in Hollywood's world famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
It was the first 2K digital cinema projector to be installed at a commercial theatre in North America."

"In February the momentum continued when digital cinema pioneer Regal launched its innovative promotional campaign to take full advantage of the new technology.

That, of course, was Regal’s digital pre-show called The 2wenty, a 20-minute pre-feature program comprised of original, short-form entertainment segments developed by NBC, Turner Broadcasting Systems, Vivendi Universal Entertainment and The Convex Group (LidRock), as well as on-screen advertising."

And THIS, of course, is an lame shortcut for digital technology. Introducing more ads that people don't want to see before they actually get to see the higher quality films is not exactly taking full advantage of technology. It's being opportunistic and giving the capabilities of digital projection a bad name.

"Any company involved in production or post-production that does not have HD capabilities today is in serious danger of falling behind the times.

One of the buzzwords at this trade show was workflow and it relates to the fact that post-production processes are changing because of both customer demand and technological advancements. While it is not new for producers to demand higher and higher quality images what is new are some of the tools post houses can now use to meet those demands."

It's weird to think that this is a message that would have to be driven home with some people, as though Digital projection is something that will go away or come along naturally by itself. I get an image of car manufacturers being surprised by a decline in the availability of fossil fuels.

"Bigger news, however, came in September when the Digital Cinema Initiative announced its official recommendations for the overall system requirements and specifications for digital cinema with the release of Version 5.0 of the voluntary DCI Technical Specification.

According to DCI, Version 5.0 represented the conclusion of the process to define the system requirements and to outline the overall specifications for digital cinema.

Fithian said that the rollout of digital cinema technology would begin in 2005. Once it happens, he said, the technology will be adopted rather quickly. He predicted that within two-three years there would be as many, if not more than, 1,000 systems installed in the United States."

It's coming...