E Digital technology has had a tremendous impact on the way artists capture, edit, create, manipulate, and re-assemble images and sound for film. Glass mattes have given way to virtual sets. Optical printers and rotoscoping have been replaced by Mac and NT workstations using Photoshop. Electronic extras populate the decks of steamships. Even film grain can be recreated and wrapped around 100 percent computer generated images to give them that in-camera look.

About the only place digital technology has not made significant inroads is in the projection of film. Granted, film soundtracks are into several generations of digital signal processing, which results in wider dynamic range and reduced track hiss and noise artifacts. But consumers are still watching images created by a piece of perforated 35mm film that winds its way through sprockets past an arc lamp at 24 frames-per-second. Basically, audiences have watched films in same the way since the 1930s.

All that is about to change, thanks to parallel advances in both high density storage media and electronic video, data, and graphics projection systems. Audiences in the neighborhood multiplex will be able to buy a ticket and see features that look "just like film," even though the images may have originated as a high-speed compressed bit stream from a disc the size of a CD-ROM.

Even if we don’t notice, we are at the verge of an historic moment in the audiovisual
Media. At last, High def cameras such as Sony’s CineAlta are delivering amazing pictures that rival the quality of film and there is no question that the only analog link in this medium has to become digital. Why should images be captured by a photochemical process when all the rest of the process is achieved in a digital medium ?

Just as digital photography has taken over and nobody questions it, HD production is on its way of becoming the standard format for movies, Tv commercials, documentaries and Televison productions.

Perhaps the most obvious advantage of electronic cinema is consistency. The100th screening will look as good as the first-without any scratches, tears, splices, or image fading. Even though the projection lamps will age, time will not degrade the source material.