BW Online: Hollywood's Digital Love/Hate Story. "Digital video is the great democratizer for the notoriously elitist film industry. A high-quality digital-video camera costs $3,000 to $4,000, vs. $500,000 or so for a traditional 35mm film camera. Digital tapes are cheap and hold as much as 40 minutes, while film reels are expensive and last 11 minutes, requiring frequent stops and starts on the set. Best of all, since everything captured is digital, directors can edit images, sound, and special effects on a personal computer. That helps explain the 62% rise in short-film entrants for this year's Sundance festival... The problem is that digital production is way ahead of its cousin, digital projection. Though entertainment execs intellectually understand that digital projection will ultimately save money -- eliminating, among other things, the $2,000 it costs to make and ship a print of a film to each movie theater -- Hollywood studios and theater owners are locked in a battle over who should pay for digital projectors, which can cost more than $100,000. The result is the technology has been slow to take hold. " Take heed.