Market intelligence report: digital cinema

This document provides market intelligence into the sector defined as digital cinema by the Intermediary Technology Institute (ITI) in Techmedia. For the purposes of this document the definition of digital cinema is: a platform enabling the digital projection of any form of content in a cinematic environment, including Hollywood-style feature production and alternative type of content. The report describes the future market opportunities, challenges, key drivers and the potential technologies in the digital cinema sector.

Information was obtained following the principles of market intelligence gathering (also known as foresighting) established by ITI Techmedia. Both primary and secondary market data were acquired and collated through market intelligence workshops, attended by experienced individuals from industry and academia; face-to-face interviews with key stakeholders from the sector; and desk research, which was used to obtain secondary data from internationally recognised market analysts.

There is considerable uncertainty within the digital cinema sector, therefore different scenarios have been developed to illustrate how the market may develop over the next five years. Based on these scenarios, it is assumed that the total global gross box office revenue will grow to around USD25 billion by 2010, with the proportion of revenue from digital content accounting for between 3% and 27% under the different scenarios. Opportunities exist for companies to develop key elements of technology which become critical to the industry but it is noted that suppliers within each of the different technology markets will experience many barriers to entry when providing services, including: various costs, time required and risk and capital investment associated with introducing new business models. The research found that market opportunities do exist across all segments of the sector, including movies, alternative content and use, and advertising. Four main market opportunity areas, relevant across all three segments, are identified: secure transport and playback; presentation; interactivity; and immersive systems. The functional needs which must be met to facilitate the development of these market opportunity areas are identified as: asset management, secure storage, secure distribution of content and access control for the area of secure transport and playback; improved projection technology, integrated projector equipment and cost-effective multi-versioning for localisation for the area of presentation; audience communication networks, interactive user devices and intra-location communication for the interactivity area; and presences, 3D content distribution and head displays for immersive systems.

There were no recommendations as this was not within the remit of the report.