Digital Projectors Projection

I've been thinking about where the film vs. digital debate is at these days. A lunchtime conversation with a co-worker lead me to discover this:

Dodona Research's digital cinema factbook press release

The gist of it is is that there are actually very few digital projectors in service worldwide -- just 194 as of last year -- but that they are being rapidly adopted, especially outside of the U.S.

Read more...Most of the major festivals (including the New York Film Festival thanks to Ingmar Bergman) have been equipped with one or more, which is good news for those of us who choose to shoot on digital and prefer a native projection. But in terms of wider distribution, the psychological bias against large-format digital film will continue for years.

Someone who's bullish on digital theatrical projection is old school mogul Philip Anschutz, the owner of the Quest fiber optic network. He bought up railroads so he could lay his fiber optics along the tracks and he wants to deliver movies from his Walden Media arm (Ray, Because of Winn-Dixie) to his theater chains, including Regal and United Artists chains.

This seems like a more efficient system, potentially, compared to satelites (although recent tests have gone well). Either way, because of exhibitor resistance to shelling out the initial installation costs, this is a longer term rollout (as with HDTV) than many people might be thinking.