我想這對這種報導有興趣的朋友們,英文應該比我強上很多才是,所以就原文刊載,少死些腦細胞.......就算是我偷懶好了...
(別炸我信箱啊!!)
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''The future has to start somewhere,'' sighs Tom Avitabile, a projectionist at the AMC Empire 25 on Manhattan's 42nd Street. Right now, that future is unspooling onto the 20 foot screen of theater 13, and, really, even the word unspooling is passé here, since this print of the cult anime film ''Akira'' isn't on a celluloid strip. It isn't even real. It's digital: A gaggle of ones and zeros streaming off a computer server is subjected to high tech mojo inside a Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing projector, then blasted out a lens by a 6,000 watt Xenon lamp. But you can't tell that from fifth row center, and that's why the digital revolution is readying to transform yet another aspect of our humdrum analog existence.

Certainly it's going to shake up Tom Avitabile's life. ''There'll be no more projection industry,'' he shrugs philosophically. ''There'll be technicians, but there won't be projectionists. It's progress. The union's not happy with it.''

While digital filmmaking has been getting all the press -- actors turned directors like Ethan Hawke (the upcoming ''Chelsea Walls'') and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming (''The Anniversary Party'') have jumped on the cheap / fast digital video bandwagon, and George ''Look, Ma, no film'' Lucas shot the entire next installment of ''Star Wars'' on high end DV equipment -- the real front line right now is at your local multiplex. Simply put, the 31 digital projectors that Texas Instruments installed two years ago on a test basis at select movie theaters around the world have proved to the film business that this technology is at last ready for its close up.

But is the film business ready for digital projection? Can financially strapped theater chains afford a wholesale conversion of their physical plants? Can they afford not to? Here are the questions everybody's asking:

<What is digital projection?>
Pretty much what it says: a projection system in which the image is stored in digital form on a computer file -- one 50 gigabyte mother of a computer file -- rather than within the grains of a celluloid strip. The trick is to make it look as good as film, with none of the scan lines or jaggedness we associate with video. Texas Instruments was first with a commercially feasible projector (and thus hopes to become the de facto market standard), but Kodak, Sony, and others are working on their own units. Additional companies are developing ways to get the file from the studio to the theater, whether that's by satellite download, fiber optic cable, or plain old DVD-ROM.

<Why even bother?>
In a word: money. The major studios spend an average of $800 million per year making film prints, an expense that would virtually disappear once the conversion to digital was complete. There's one catch, says Eric Scheirer, an analyst with Forrester Research: ''The studios don't benefit until the majority of theaters are converted, since the difference between cutting 2,000 prints of a film and cutting 1,700 prints because 300 theaters are digital is not that big a deal.''

And, unfortunately, the benefits to theater owners aren't yet quantifiable, which is one reason they're resisting conversion. The immediate upside is increased efficiency -- being able to quickly switch, say, theater 7 to accommodate overflow showings of ''Bridget Jones's Diary.'' Down the line, though, digital projection could allow exhibitors to program all sorts of alternative entertainment: live rock concerts, sporting events, interactive laser Floyd -- you name it.

<Who's going to pay?>
With 10 theatrical chains filing for bankruptcy in the past year, it's not exactly the time for a massive hardware overhaul at an estimated $150,000 per screen -- especially when the immediate savings go to the studios. ''It is highly unlikely that digital cinema will happen if exhibitors are asked to pick up most of the costs,'' states John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners trade group.

The ball, then, is in the hands of technology companies and the major studios. The techs are already rolling out plans: Technicolor and Qualcomm have announced a joint initiative that would underwrite the conversion of 1,000 U.S. theaters to digital in exchange for an average of 12.5 cents from each ticket (and use of their proprietary file compression technology). As for the studios, informal discussions are under way within and between the majors as to the best way to hasten the digital changeover, financially and otherwise.

Says Warner Bros. Pictures president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman, ''Not only do we need to seed the marketplace with new projectors, but we need to create a campaign that lets the public know how revolutionary this will be to their moviegoing habits.''

<What about the smaller mom and pop theaters?>
On the face of it, the coming conversion would seem to favor the major exhibition chains who (in theory at least) have deeper pockets. ''We can't afford to put in expensive equipment,'' says Ayron Pickerill, whose 15 screens are in tiny Montana towns like Polson and Wolf Point. ''And if we don't have it, and everything is digital, we'll be out of business; that's all there is to it.''

In reality, though, the mom and pops may be in the best position. ''The cost of conversion for a small business is within the realm of possibility for a small business loan,'' says Scheirer. ''If all I need to lay out is my $150,000, I make some technology arrangements, and all of a sudden I have a bright and shiny new screen.'' Even better, that new screen won't have to wait for a scratched print of the latest hit film to show up two months after the initial release. ''We'll be current with what everyone else is doing,'' enthuses Pickerill.

<Won't this make it easier to pirate films?>
Actually, it may make it harder. While movies may soon be shunted in file form across fiber optic lines and down satellite links, most observers aren't expecting a Napster style free for all. For one thing, the transmission systems are closed off from the greater Internet; for another, they'll be business to business transactions -- from studio to theater, rather than business to consumer. Even that guy with the camcorder in the third row may have to find a new line of work, since digital screenings can be encoded with informational watermarking that reveals not only what theater a bootleg was taped in, but which showing at what time. Yes, that is Big Brother on your pager.

<Why use film at all then?>
Good question. ''Everything is already in a digital sandwich now anyway,'' says director Robert Zemeckis (''Cast Away''), who has recently overseen the establishment of a digital film school, the Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, at his alma mater, USC. ''The only places we use film are in the camera and in the theater.'' And the camera could be next: If Lucas' gamble pays off, ''Episode II'' could conceivably become a watershed in movie production, the ''Jazz Singer'' of digital cinema. Says Zemeckis, ''There's a good chance that I may have made my last film on film.''

<So when's it going to happen?>
It depends on who's talking (and what their financial stake is), but the consensus is: slowly. ''I wouldn't expect to see a mass rollout of digital exhibition technology until 2004, 2005 at the earliest,'' says Forrester's Scheirer.

Moreover, reports of the imminent death of celluloid are greatly exaggerated. ''We think film is going to be around for a very long time,'' says Phil Barlow, executive VP of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. ''It's probably not economically viable to convert every screen in this country to digital, and as long as there's money to be made from film exhibition, the studios aren't likely to pass up that revenue.''

It's hard to dispute, though, that celluloid's days are ultimately numbered, and that's causing ambivalence in some romantic souls. Digital projectionist Tom Avitabile is one of them. ''I like film,'' he says in the booth of theater 13. ''[But] the next generation won't know what film is. They don't know what a record is. There'll be no nostalgic memory. You see the grain on an old movie, that's nostalgia.'' He punches a button on the new machine. ''Film is history.'' It's not clear which meaning he intends.