Digital Cinema is to be rolled out on a wide scale from 2007 in a bid to maintain the experience gap between cinema and home entertainment systems such as HDTV, according to the latest report from Screen Digest.
During the second half of 2005, following on from the release of the technical specification for d-cinema, there was widespread growth in the acquisition of digital cinema screens, with numbers doubling over six months.
The report forecasts that there will be over 17,000 d-cinema screens globally by 2010, compared to the 849 screens by the end of 2005.
By number of screens, the top five cities for d-cinema include four from Asia and one in the USA: Barco dominates the market for digital projectors in Asia and Europe, with Christie holding the equivalent position in the US.
Although Asia has four of the top five cities by number of screens deployed, North America is the leading region, followed by Asia and then Europe.
As usual, the main driving force behind the adoption of this new technology is Hollywood, perhaps fearful of rising levels of piracy from peer-to-peer file sharers and other sources likely to hit profits.
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