After a number of years while there were very few digital screens across the world, there is now a constantly growing number with more being announced practically every day. According to Media Salles there were 4,205 digital screens at the end of June 2007. List of Christie Digital Screens
In 2005 the UK Film Council announced plans to launch the Digital Screen Network. A list of the cinemas which were awarded the money for a projector are list here.
At the end of 2007, 5.5 per cent of screens across the world had converted to digital technology (source Screen Digest – http://www.screendigest.com/reports/07digcin/readmore/view.html)
There is some interesting analysis by Screen Digest which has the following information listed:
Key findings from the report (Digital Cinema: Roll out, Business Models and Forecasts to 2010):
Screen Digest forecasts that there will be more than 17,000 d-cinema screens in the world by 2010.
The number of d-cinema screens globally doubled in the second half of 2005.
There were 849 d-cinema screens by year end 2005.
97 titles were released globally in d-cinema standard during 2005.
Of the top 5 leading cities by number of digital screens deployed, four are in Asia and one is in the USA.
Christie dominates the market for d-cinema projectors in the US market, whereas Barco holds a majority of market share in Europe and Asia.
North America is the leading region for d-cinema screens, followed by Asia then Europe.
As the number of screens which are digital is constantly changing, there are a number of recommended sites to look at for the latest figures, these have been listed below:
- Media Salles (www.mediasalles.it)
- The UK Film Council (www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk)
- Screen Digest (www.screendigest.com)
UPDATE: JULY 2009: According to Dodona Research there are now almost 12,000 screens which have converted to digital projection worldwide out of a total of around 110,000 globally. This is expected to rise to 20% by 2012.
Thee Media Salles Cinema Yearbook provides Digital Cinema stats up to June 2008