Digital cinema is coming to Ireland in a big way. A project is underway to install a digital cinema network throughout the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with the aim of converting all its cinema screens to digital format.

"The digital projection offers picture perfect quality and signifigant cost savings," said Moira Horgan, the head of marketing for the Irish Film Board. "The boxes are being inserted as we speak."

Avica Technology is bringing the digital presentation systems to 515 screens throughout Ireland to run alongside traditional 35mm film projectors, said Kevin Cummins, spokesman for Avica Europe, the European arm of the Santa Monica, California, digital cinema technology and services company.

"Digital can reduce the cost of distribution, eliminating the need for costly reels of film that need to be printed, delivered, collected once the cinema is done showing the movie and then destroyed," Cummins said. "From the (average viewer's) point of view, digital provides picture-perfect quality. The movies just look a lot better, from the first showing through to a thousand showings."

Movie theaters will be able to download a movie to a computer server over a satellite link. The content is protected with multiple levels of encryption and each projector has its own encryption key, Cummins said. When a movie is no longer needed it can be deleted from the projector by the theater or the movie studio.

The encryption technology was developed by Digital Cinema Initiatives, a joint venture of the Walt Disney Co., Fox Entertainment Group, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Avica and its subsidiary Digital Cinema (Ireland) have been planning the project for the past two years and began installing the first 25 projection boxes on March 1. Those boxes should be operational within the next few weeks, and in a year's time all the movie screens in Ireland should be fitted out with the digital kit, Cummins said.

The Euro 40 million (US$53.3 million) price tag for the project was raised though venture capital investors, he said. Avica hopes to announce similar deals in other European countries at the 58th Cannes Film Festival in France, which takes place May 11 to May 22, Cummins said.

Ireland was picked as the first region to get the full digital cinema treatment because it is a manageable size and has the second-highest level of cinema attendance in Europe, with 80 percent of its films coming from Hollywood, Cummins said.

"There are about 40 screens in the U.S. that are using the digital projectors, but they aren't tethered to any sort of network. This will the first time a nationwide digital network will be rolled out," Cummins said. "This is the best way to show the industry what is possible with digital technology."

According to the Irish Film Board, besides offering superior picture quality for cinema goers, the digital network may have a positive knock-on effect for the Irish film making community.

"It will be cheaper to make small Irish films because the costs of making and distributing prints won't be factored in," Horgan said. "The money saved can then be used to on promoting and advertising smaller films."

Additionally, cinemas can afford to show a wider variety of films, bringing more choice to the public, she said.