Are we there yet?

Disney At The Forefront Of Digital Cinema
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"NEW YORK - As digital cinema starts to move from technical specs to reality, The Walt Disney Co. has become the first studio to commit to providing its pictures for the new format.

The Mouse House pledge is part of a potential rollout of more than 2,500 digital-cinema systems being administered by tech companies Christie and AccessIT (amex: AIX - news - people ).

The joint venture, dubbed Christie/AIX, will fund 200 d-cinema systems this year, which could more than triple the number of digital screens in the U.S. "

In other news, Disney seems to have made some sort of commitment to funding the installation digital cinema, as per its promise. Unfortunately I seemed to have imaginined what would have been the most juiciest part of this article which was a few vague details about how the funding would work (which I swear I saw, but no longer seem to be able to find). As you may have read elsewhere, Disney plans to pay whatever financial institution that actually purchases the projectors a "print fee" of about 1000 dollars (roughly the equivalent of manufacturing a physical print) for every film released to be shown on a new projector.

I wonder how it's going to work with the other studios though. Will everybody pitch in and pay the print fee? Will studios who don't chip in be barred from the digital projectors? It doesn't seem likely that Disney would offer the other studios a free ride, but I hope whatever results isn't fewer movies being available.