Monday, March 22, 2004 | 9:23 a.m.
In 1999 digital cinema was to forever change the movie industry.
Five years later the revolution is yet to begin, while several key questions remain unanswered:
Who is going to pay for the costly digital projection upgrades for the cineplexes?
What are the safeguards against piracy?
And even, is digital really better to watch than film?
Not surprisingly, those issues are the featured topics of several seminars at the 30th annual ShoWest Convention, the largest such event in the world for the motion-picture theater industry.
ShoWest runs today through Thursday at Bally's and Paris Las Vegas.
During the convention film studios preview movies, giving theater owners their first taste of upcoming releases. And theater industry companies display the newest in concessions and cinema equipment.
In addition, ShoWest provides a variety of seminars and panel discussions addressing the most important topics in the movie industry, including digital cinema.
"Digital cinema will be the biggest transition technology in the history of the movie industry," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), which puts together ShoWest.
"With digital projection in the theaters, we're just trying to finalize the plans for a wider-scale rollout in the future. Those issues will be discussed at ShoWest as well."
There are 250 digital projectors in use in theaters around the world. Two of them are in Las Vegas: Century Orleans 14 and Century Sam's Town 18 have featured digital projection.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to cinemas' conversion to digital projection is the hefty price tag.
A single digital projector for one movie auditorium costs between $100,000 to $150,000. A state-of-the-art, 35-mm projector costs $30,000.
"It's simply not possible to sell enough additional tickets to make up for a three-fold increase in price," Fithian said. "It's clear theater owners can't afford this cost."
Which leaves it to Hollywood to foot the bill.
As it stands, it costs studios between $1,000 to $1,500 per copy to make and distribute a film print. With digital cinema, however, the films will be beamed to theaters via satellite or even through the Internet, meaning no costs to create a print and little expense to distribute.
Fithian estimates studios will save up to $1 billion a year making the switch to digital, and that it's in Hollywood's best interest to pick up the bill.
"I think it's fairly clear that studios will fund the transition," he said. "They will save a tremendous amount of money (from) the conversion."
Pirate booty
Even if studios and theater owners can reach an agreement on paying for the transition to digital cinema, piracy remains a growing concern in the movie industry.
The music industry is waging a losing battle against piracy, in large part because digital music can be swapped from user to user without degradation in sound quality.
Before the introduction of the CD, music files were mostly traded on cassette, which, even under the best circumstances, would lose quality with each subsequent copy.
As it stands, Hollywood is losing millions of dollars because of the sale of bootlegged films -- even without digital cinema.
Many pirates simply smuggle video recorders into movie auditoriums and record the film directly in the theater. A big drawback to this approach, however, is the loss of film quality and the intrusion of audience noise, which often drowns out the film.
With digital cinema, though, it is possible to get a direct copy of the film by illegally tapping into the distribution stream over the Internet or from a satellite, or even from the theater itself, where the film is stored on a hard drive.
In a recent interview with the Las Vegas Sun, film critic Roger Ebert said director Robert Altman complained films shot digitally are too easily stolen from studio labs, and can be sold as rough cuts on the streets of Hong Kong, where video pirates move more freely than in the United States, even before the film is released.
"The problem with digital is that it is so easily transformed into a piratable medium," Ebert said. "And that's one reason why all that talk about digital projection has died off, because it's a lot harder to steal a picture from a 35 mm print than a digital file."
But Brooke Williams, business development manager for Texas Instruments' DLP (Digital Light Processing), the company behind the digital projector technology, disagrees with assertions that the medium is too easily pirated.
He said with encrypted security codes included in the digital film, studios can better protect their product than with the standard film prints.
"The encryption can be applied at very high levels (and) is the kind the government uses," he said. "It's virtually impossible to break the code and steal the content."
Even if a hacker breaks the encryption or even intercepts the film file from a satellite transmission to the theaters, he or she would require a set of security keys sent by the studios to theater owners.
Without those keys, the film won't play.
There's also forensic technologies embedded in the code, allowing pirated movies to be tracked back to the source.
Hollywood employed such a device with several of its so-called "screener" copies sent to Academy members for Oscar consideration.
After several films showed up on the Internet, including "The Last Samuari" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," both of which were still playing in theaters nationwide, the FBI tracked the illegal postings to Carmine Carido, a 69-year-old actor and Academy voter.
Carido admitted he sent the copies of the movies to a friend, Russell William Sprague, 51, of Homewood, Ill.
Sprague was later charged with conspiracy and copyright infringement, although he has denied putting the movies on the Internet. His trial begins March 30 in Los Angeles.
Fithian acknowledges there never will be a fool-proof method to prevent piracy.
"There will always be a way to steal" movies, he said. "We just want to decrease the ways as much as possible."
Looks good
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing digital cinema is its most subjective: visual appeal.
Despite a crispness and clarity that rivals high-definition television, and the fact the picture will not fade or alter from repeated viewings or over time, there are those digital detractors who insist celluloid simply looks better.
Ebert said the problem with digital projection in the past is that it wasn't good enough to be used professionally, despite what proponents of the technology claimed.
"You had all these credulous people saying, 'Oh, it's as good as film,' but people who knew what they were talking about knew that it wasn't," Ebert said.
"The day may come when digital projection is better than film, for all I know. But until that day comes, I think most directors prefer to see their own movies in 35 mm well projected. And, of course, there's the standard of 70 mm, which has been allowed to die out and is just spectacular."
Brooke maintains, however, that digital projection has made significant improvements and that the technology is being embraced by "some of the most critical eyes" in Hollywood.
"We spent a lot of time with the creative community ... we started with Conrad Hall (the late renowned cinematographer), who was one of the best in the business. He helped us design this," Brooke said. "And in side-by-side demonstrations done by the AFI (American Film Institute) ... there was an incredibly positive response.
"The feedback was, 'You guys nailed it.' "
Brooke said some of the comments went so far as to suggest digital exceeded the quality of film.
"The fact that all of the studios have released digital content is a pretty strong indication of their confidences in the technology."
Whether preferred or not, digital films are certainly in the minority when compared to their celluloid cousins.
The biggest non-animated movie filmed entirely in digital was released two years ago, "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones."
But the technology is catching on. One of this summer's biggest releases, "Spider-Man 2," is an entirely digital creation.
At the ShoWest convention two years ago, Rick McCallum, executive producer of the new trilogy of "Star Wars" films, addressed theater owners on the merits of going digital.
"The shift to digital projection is going to happen," McCallum forecast. "Everyone in this room knows it. It's already in every editing room, every sound department, every visual effects company and now it's competing with film to capture images. The last step, of course, is exhibition."
He also attempted to assuage industry concerns over whether digital can duplicate the resolution and subtleties of film.
"There's quite a bit of hysteria about (how) the compression of the data will compromise the art of capturing images," he said. "I have to ask the question: Does anyone ... seriously think for a moment that we would be reckless enough to risk $100 million of our money to make a movie digitally if we thought we were going to achieve less image quality than film? Or, for that matter, to go through all this just to achieve the same quality?"
But until everyone -- from the studios and filmmakers to theater owners and moviegoers -- is convinced the new technology is equal to or better than film, the digital revolution remains on hold.
"The quality of digital cinema is essential for the transition to happen. (Theater owners) are not going to make the change to digital unless it is better (than film)," Fithian said. "Most of our members feel that it will be better, but it needs to improve and new projectors are being developed to make that possible.
"In the end digital cinema will offer a consistently better image quality than film. It's not there yet, but it will be."
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