Digital Cinema Compression Format Shootout

<font color='#000080'>Digital cinema is coming. April marks the start and finish of a compression scheme shootout (at the Pacific Theater in Hollywood) involving 8 companies (undisclosed for now) vying for inclusion in the final specification for digital cinema. The winner(s) are expected to be selected by the end of the month, allowing the DCI spec to be finalized by September.

It's estimated that over 30,000 theaters could be upgraded by early 2005, saving studios millions of dollars in film print distribution costs. Here's a quote:

The biggest benefit of the shift may be pouring the expected savings back in the pockets of studios in hopes it will lead to more movies and marketing, he added.

Uh, huh. What I find funny (but expected) is that studios are apparently planning to pocket this money instead of driving the market through reduced theater (and thus ticket) costs. While I applaud progress (we have yet to see if these digital compression formats will rival film) $8 movie tickets are, at least to me, yet another reason to invest in home theater!

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