Digital Download Projected in Theatre

Internet delivery of digital video hit the big screen this week when the "Quantum Project" was downloaded from SightSound Technologies (www.sightsound.com) to the Pittsburgh's Star City Cinemas and projected with a Panasonic projector.

Quantum Project, the Internet feature film produced by Metafilmics and starring Stephen Dorff, Fay Masterson and John Cleese, was released for Internet distribution only, in May of 2000 on www.sightsound.com. It ran for one day on March 19, 2001 in eight showings on the big screen. According to a spokesperson for SightSound, it drew a larger audience than the other films showing at the theatre.

For the theatrical exhibition of "Quantum Project," SightSound used Windows Media Video 8, and according to the company, prepared the film for large-screen display using two-pass variable bit rate encoding at an average bit rate of 4.1 Mbps, yielding screen resolution of 1280x1024. The encrypted Windows Media video is downloaded from SightSound Technologies' media servers, with the license for the theatrical showing of the movie purchased and served over an Internetconnection. A computer workstation with twin Pentium III processors plays the movie through a Panasonic PT-D9600U DLP projector.

In other digital movie news, MeTV (www.metv.com) announced it will be adding content from Jetcast (www.jetcast.com) to its broadband entertainment service. Jetcast is a wholesale distributor of entertainment content, with such titles as "Drowning Mona," and "Bats." This new content will be offered on a pay-per-view basis.