Marketing digital cinema, high-def DVD news, movie piracy

- UltraStar Cinemas in southern California this weekend becomes the first multiplex showing all digital movies on all its screens, including MI:3. They also are doing a fine job of marketing digital cinema as a premium experience -- something many other theater owners don't think is possible.

- The arrival of Blu-ray discs in stores has been pushed back a month, to June 20th.

- This Reuters piece says that only about 1 in 5 users of the Peerflix DVD trading service plan to buy high-def DVD players or discs in 2006.

- The MPAA says that piracy cost the movie industry $6.1 billion in 2005. $2.3 billion of that is from Internet downloading, the MPAA says. From the LA Times piece:

The new study also found that the typical copyright thief was a male who was 16 to 24 years old and lived in an urban area. In the U.S., college students caused most of the piracy losses, the survey found.



"As an industry we have to continue to educate people about copyright laws and the consequences of breaking those laws," [MPAA prez Dan] Glickman said.