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To: john who wrote (298)	6/6/2000 9:21:00 AM
From: john	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 369

Digital Distribution of Movie Is Planned by Fox and Cisco By RICK LYMAN LOS ANGELES -- On Tuesday, for the first time, a Hollywood movie will be digitally transmitted across the country over the Internet and then digitally projected to a cinema audience, going from the studio in Hollywood to a theater in Atlanta without ever touching film, officials at 20th Century Fox Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. said. The idea is to demonstrate the potential of digital distribution, which many believe will one day supplant traditional canisters of celluloid, and to allow Fox to have the world premiere of its new animated feature, "Titan A.E.," at Atlanta's Supercomm trade show on Tuesday. The film, a space adventure that combines three-dimensional, computer-generated images with traditional animation, is scheduled to open in theaters on June 16. Cisco makes networking equipment. Digital projectors have been used sporadically in the last year to exhibit a few films in a handful of theaters around the country -- Disney's "Dinosaur" is one -- and video images have been streaming across the Internet, with varying success, for a long time. But, Fox and Cisco officials said, this will be the first time the two processes have been combined in a demonstration of the kind of digital distribution network that may replace film in coming years. "Such cutting-edge applications using the Internet not only revolutionize movie creation and distribution, but will drive innovation in myriad other industries as well," said Larry Lang, vice president for service provider marketing at Cisco. "Just as the Internet has enabled industries of all kinds to increase flexibility, decrease costs, and explore new opportunities, digital cinema has the potential to bring great benefits to the industry." Using Cisco's latest technology, "Titan A.E." will be electronically hurled from Qwest Communication Inc.'s CyberCenter in Burbank to the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, where it will be projected on a Barco/Texas Instruments DLP Cinema digital projector. How long it might be before such digital distribution is common is an open question. Two major issues have been slowing the transition. The first is the price. Cinema owners are reluctant to pay an estimated $100,000 per projector when the bulk of the savings will go to the movie studios, which will be freed from the costs of making thousands of prints and shipping them around the world. The second issue is the fear among many in Hollywood that once their films are loosed upon the Internet, they will be subject to the same kinds of piracy that have plagued the music industry in recent months. As a result, both Fox and Cisco stressed the security precautions they would be using with the Cisco 7140 Virtual Private Network, a method for isolating and protecting data traveling across the internet, including fire walls, security routers and encryption devices.