Definition Digital cinema encompasses every aspect of the movie making process, from
production and post-production to distribution and projection. A digitally produced
or digitally converted movie can be distributed to theaters via satellite, physical
media, or fiber optic networks. The digitized movie
is stored by a computer/server which "serves" it to a digital projector
for each screening of the movie. Projectors based
on DLP Cinema® technology are currently installed
in over 1,195 theaters in 30 countries worldwide - and remain
the first and only commercially available digital cinema projectors.
When you see a movie digitally, you see that movie the way its creators intended
you to see it: with incredible clarity and detail. In a range of up to 35 trillion
colors. And whether you're catching that movie on opening night or months after,
it will always look its best, because digital movies are immune to the scratches,
fading, pops and jitter that film is prone to with repeated screenings.Main advantage
of digital movies are that, expensive film rolls and postprocessing expenses could
be done away. Movie would be transmitted to computers in movie theatres, hence
the movie could be released in a larger number of theatres.
Digital
technology has already taken over much of the home entertainment market. It seems
strange, then, that the vast majority of theatrical motion pictures are shot and
distributed on celluloid film,just like they were more than a century ago. Of
course, the technology has improved over the years, but it's still based on the
same basic principles. The reason is simple: Up until recently, nothing could
come close to the image quality of projected film. Digital cinema is simply a
new approach to making and showing movies. The basic idea is to use bits and bytes
(strings of 1s and 0s) to record, transmit and replay images, rather than using
chemicals on film.
The main advantage
of digital technology (such as a HYPERLINK "http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm"
CD ) is that it can store, transmit and retrieve a huge amount of information
exactly as it was originally recorded. Analog technology (such as an audio tape)
loses information in transmission, and generally degrades with each viewing. Digital
information is also a lot more flexible than analog information. A computer can
manipulate bytes of data very easily, but it can't do much with a streaming analog
signal. It's a completely different language.
Digital
cinema affects three major areas of movie-making: " Production - how
the movie is actually made " Distribution - how the movie gets from
the production company " to movie theaters " Projection -
how the theater presents the movie . Production
With an $800 consumer digital camcorder, a stack of tapes, a computer and some
video-editing software, you could make a digital movie. But there are a couple
of problems with this approach. First, your image resolution won't be that great
on a big movie screen. Second, your movie will look like news footage, not a normal
theatrical film. onventional video has a completely different look from film,
and just about anybody can tell the difference in
a second. Film and video differ a lot in image clarity, depth of focus and color
range, but the biggest contrast is frame rate. Film cameras normally shoot at
24 frames per second, while most U.S. television video cameras shoot at 30 frames
per second (29.97 per second, to be exact).