What does “DCI compliant” mean, and which products are DCI compliant?
“DCI compliant” is a term used to describe products that conform to the DCI specification. At the time of this writing, no products on the market are fully “DCI compliant.” Products installed today meet an informal specification called “Interop.” A “Transitional 3” upgrade is scheduled for Spring 2010, in which content interchange will ideally be upgraded from “Interop” to SMPTE. Note that SMPTE-compliant distribution requires compliance to a larger set of standards than DCI. While products strive to meet the DCI specification today, eventually, all products will have to be SMPTE compliant. DCI published v1.0 of its test plan, as developed by Cinecert. Formal arrangements for testing through 3rd party agencies were recently announced. Note, however, that these testing agencies will not be a central authority to determine whether or not a device is DCI compliant. That determination will be individually decided by each studio, which could produce less than uniform results. This issue bec
“DCI compliant” is a term used to describe products that conform to the DCI specification. Products that have been tested per the DCI Compliance Test Plan (CTP) are posted at the DCI compliance web site. At the time of this writing, only DLP Cinema® Series 2 projectors have passed the CTP. Notably, DCI compliance does not require compliance to the full set of SMPTE DCP standards. Also note that the term “DCI compliant” is not trademarked and there is no mechanism for managing its use. Anyone can claim their product is DCI compliant. The only products that are actually compliant are listed at the DCI compliance web site.
