How did cinema stop being film, and what is a digital cinema package?

It happened by a deal among studios, and a file format. In March 2002 major studios formed Digital Cinema Initiatives to develop a system specification for digital cinema. What cinemas receive is a digital cinema package, or DCP: a collection of digital files that stores and conveys the audio, image and data streams of a movie. The picture is compressed with JPEG 2000, and the sound is uncompressed 24-bit linear PCM.

A DCP can be encrypted: the necessary keys are time-limited and locked to the server and projector that will screen the film. If a cinema wants to extend the run or move the title to another screen, a new key must be obtained from the distributor.

Money drove the change. Making release prints for 4,000 screens at about $1,500 each meant a wide release cost about $6 million, while 4,000 digital copies might cost $200,000. But the saving went to the distributors, while cinemas had to buy the projectors, at about $100,000 per screen on average. The rollout stalled, and the Virtual Print Fee model was created to pass some of the saving on to the cinemas.

Quality was argued over too. The theoretical resolution of 35 mm film is greater than that of 2K digital cinema, but since the early 2000s most movies, whether shot on film or digitally, have been mastered and edited at 2K.