First digital releases.

[Stephen Furley]

What, and when, were the first films to be generally available in 2k digital format?

[Carsten Kurz]

Well, you probably know that the first digital movies were shown in something like 1.4k? Don't know exactly when they switched to 2k. Probably just when Texas Instruments had their first 2k chipset ready. Maybe 2004 or so. As far as I know, even the digital presentations of Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones' in 2002 were still 1.4k.
The scanning and DI process for 35mm releases were already done in 2k at the time when digital cinema was still 1.4k. More precisely, 1280*1024.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I remember some first trial runs with the DP-100 prototype back in early 2004, though I don't know if this was FullHD or 2K content they were testing back then. I guess it wasn't until the DCI spec was available, the first general 2K releases became available. If I remember correctly, the EVS Cinestore servers could technically achieve 48FPS at 1920x1080, which is close to 2K. Those machines did hardware MPEG2 though and not M-JPEG2000.

Maybe someone remembers their first movie in DCP format, although I guess that once the DCP standard was ratified, multiple movies appeared as DCP all at once.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I was not involved in digital till about 2005. I worked on mainly DP-100's and NC 2500's. I remember updating quite a few DP-100'S out of the mpeg realm and into the JPEG realm when that happened. But before JPEG2000, digital screenings with these projectors were pretty rare. Once JPEG2000 came in things seemed to take off.