Toy Story 2 makes celluloid history

The digital distribution and projection of mainstream Hollywood films has stepped up a gear with the release of Toy Story 2.

The hit film has been screened in digital format in three UK cinemas - the Odeon Leicester Square and the Warner Village Finchley Road in London, and UCI Trafford Centre in Manchester.

The companies behind the film are also touting digital distribution as a way to get 'prints' to remote cinemas and dynamically change adverts and trailers according to demand, time of day and demographics.

Steve Green, a director at Cap Gemini, said: "The use of digitalisation changes the whole value chain both around distribution, content production and the feedback mechanism.

"Traditionally we've had companies that distribute films as a middleman. The new technology potentially allows that value chain to be much shorter and much more direct and gives the production company the opportunity to also introduce a very immediate feedback loop into the value chain."

Charles Brown, a director at iGroup, the ebusiness division of Computacenter, said: "Traditional distribution has certain costs and problems, but
cinema chains that upgrade [to digital technology] will be flexible, and able to change ads, trailers and so on as necessary."

The makers of Toy Story 2 - Disney and Steve Jobs' Pixar digital animation studio - have also been quick to point out that digital projection offers better picture quality.

The Toy Story 2 trial was conducted with DLP Cinema projection technology from Texas Instruments.