DCI Standard

A set of technical specifications for digital cinema published by Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC - a joint venture of the Hollywood studios founded in March 2002 (Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.). It was created at a time when the first digital screenings (from 1999) ran on mutually incompatible proprietary systems, and digital cinema risked fragmenting into a number of per-studio and per-vendor formats.

The goal of DCI was to establish a single open specification guaranteeing three things: picture and sound quality at least on the level of 35mm film, interoperability (one package plays in any cinema in the world) and content security against piracy. The first DCI System Specification was released on 20 July 2005 and has been updated continuously since. It defines the DCP format, JPEG 2000 compression, 2K and 4K resolutions, the XYZ colour space and content encryption with KDM keys and forensic watermarking.

Equipment compliance is verified against the CTP test plan - which is why cinema projectors and servers are called "DCI". Distributors release first-run films only to auditoriums whose equipment meets the specification. In the Czech Republic, the first DCI digitization of a single-screen cinema took place in 2008 at Kino Káčko in Dobřany. [www.dcimovies.com]