Is This The Final Reel For 35mm As Digital Cinema Enters The Frame?

Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology is being used for the first time in the UK. An entire cinema programme, including adverts for Royal Navy recruitment, Cadbury’s, Guinness and Nike, along with action film The Perfect Storm, is being shown digitally this week at London’s Warner Village West End and the Birmingham Star City.

The adverts, screened by Pearl & Dean, include the award-winning Guinness Surfers. The picture quality using the DLP projectors, of which there are four installed in the UK, is said to be higher than that of traditional 35mm film.

Other benefits include the fact that picture quality does not degrade with the number of times it is shown, and that distribution of films can take place via data links such as ISDN, rather than having to physically send out film reels to cinemas.

DLP has been developed by Texas Instruments, which is currently in negotiations with Hollywood studios and distributors in order to gain the investment required to roll the technology out across the board.

Field demonstrations like this UK one are taking place across the world and Pearl & Dean say they are confident enough of its future success to encourage their advertisers to look to producing high resolution commercials in future, as these are more suited to digitalisation for both television and cinema.

Pearl & Dean: 020 7636 5252