Movie Film Projectors Will Be Phased Out; Replaced By Digital

The movies are going high-tech. For over 100 years 35mm film was what movies were stored and watched on but with the digital age comes the phase out of the 35mm film and old time projector. I remember every holiday my grandpa would get out the old green projector, set up the screen and we would watch the home movies they made. There was no sound so you had to figure out what was going on and their was plenty of hamming it up from us kids. Looks like the movie theaters are moving into the new century as well with digital cinema.

There are only about 1/2 of theaters nationally that have already gone digital, but according to Texas Instruments, over the next 4 years all will go digital. So isn't that a good thing? Well, yes and no.

When comparing the average film presentation to the average digital cinema presentation, we have found that the digital cinema presentation was equal in picture quality and was a more stable image than film. While some complain of seeing artifacts, we have not observed problems with the presentations we've seen. Digital presentations do not get scratched, fade, or suffer the other problems that film experiences, especially after being played for an extended time. The picture and sound should be as good on day 100 as they were on day 1.

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Digital is cheaper on movie producers but for cinemas the equipment can be a bit pricey. There's no shipping and storage cost for large rolls of film however. But,this also leads to another question; how many people will be out of work by theaters going digital? If you go digital your cinema could have one central system that would run the movies that would be send down digitally and downloaded and programmed for the entire day, one person could handle multiple theaters at once. Then you have the projector manufactures, those factory workers will be without jobs. However, many are thinking ahead and switching to digital manufacturing already thus keeping jobs. With the Postal Service looking at cutting back too digital technology might mean getting movies to theaters faster too.

Is anyone else getting worried that we are getting too smart for our own good and we are, in essence, cannibalizing ourselves?

While some film makers are resisting the digital ride and sticking to film as long as possible. The film/movie industry is still a multi-billion dollar affair and older film makers like what they already know. Kind of the teaching old dog new tricks mentality. However, you have the Steven Speilbergs and Cameron Crowes that are making movies like Avatar that couldn't be made on film. They are highly digitally produced.

So the moral here is life moves on, technology increases and we must simply embrace it all; good and bad. So get ready to move into the digital age whether you like it or not because it seems that movie theaters are heading that direction. And if you have an old time projector hold on to it, it might be worth some money soon.