Digital Cinema here at last
On digital cinema, update on my postings on digital cinema and business model implications …
In a major move designed to accelerate the long-awaited implementation of Digital Cinema nation-wide, Access Integrated Technologies, Inc. and Christie Digital Systems today jointly announced a preliminary agreement to create the movie industry’s first practical Digital Cinema funding framework. The plan satisfies the diverse concerns of movie studios and exhibitors by standardizing content format, delivery and presentation. It minimizes financial risks for studios and exhibitors by establishing an innovative template that allows private investment in the burgeoning Digital Cinema industry.
In the end the eventual conversion of all screens is the goal. Digital cinema may well be the movie industry’s answer to the threat posed by DVD home theater systems and the like. It also will open up some new business model opportunities for theater owners who should now start to think about business model innovations at last.
Notice the comments by Erik Schonfeld in this Business2.0 article:
Digital looks great for movie studios too. If all 37,000 screens in the country were digital, the studios could save $1 billion to $2 billion a year on distribution costs alone. But the real advantage would be the flexibility gained by both studios and theater owners. Digital distribution promises to make the industry more responsive to the whims of the movie-obsessed public. If a movie became a hit, it could immediately be shown in additional theaters, without a delay while the film canisters were delivered. Theaters could change trailers and advertisements on the fly by just dragging and dropping a few icons on a computer. And it would be much easier to show different versions of the same movie — in different languages, for instance — or to release a movie in different countries simultaneously.
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