IBM have made a move to become involved with digital cinema (otherwise known as e-cinema or d-cinema) partnering with Kodak and bringing the operating system (OS) to the party. There’s been an underground excitement about d-cinema for a couple of years now but it’s been hampered by both the cost of the equipment and primarily by the industries inability to decide who should pay for the equipment.
Neither the cinemas or the distributors what to put their hands in their pockets. The outlets say they don’t have the reserves to be able to afford it as their current margins are squeezed so hard by the distributors. The distributors say they don’t feel they should pay for it, even though I think they have the most to gain from it. One advantage of the indecision is that over the last couple of years the prices of the equipment have dropped substantially.
In a different time I think the people with the most to gain, the advertisers, would have put money in, but their hardly likely to do that currently.