Jasper’s theatre is moving into the digital age, ditching its 60-year-old film projectors in favour of brand-new devices capable of displaying 3D movies.

A pair of Christie digital projectors were installed at the Chaba Theatre last week with the final film shown the old-fashioned way – on film – on Thursday.

“Friday, it’ll be all digital,” Chaba owner Dwain Wacko said as he gave the Fitzhugh a tour of the new projection room, which was in transition at the time.

The old projectors were still in place at that point, along with the giant platters which once held movies recorded on reels of films. The room is much emptier now, with the sleeker and more compact digital projectors taking up far less space.

For the most part, though, audiences won’t notice a major difference – at least not yet. For ordinary movies the viewer experience will be largely the same, Wacko said, although the picture and sound will be clearer as film scratches and other analog imperfections will be a thing of the past.

The real difference will be noticeable when the theatre offers 3D films, which was not possible with the xenon-lamp-powered projectors that had been in place at the Chaba since the mid-20th century.

The new projectors come with polarizing filters which, when combined with polarizing glasses worn by audience members, present two slightly different images, one to each eye, creating the three-dimensional effect.

Wacko said tickets to 3D movies will cost $3 more than regular tickets, as the Chaba has to pay a per-person licensing fee to its technology provider.

The way films are delivered to the Chaba will also change along with the new projector technology. Instead of large, metal canisters full of film reels, movies now arrive on hard drives. In the future, Wacko said they can simply be downloaded via satellite.

The digital projectors will also allow the Chaba to show movies at a higher frame rate, he added. The sequel to Avatar, for example, is to be filmed at 48 frames per second (or even 60, director James Cameron recently suggested) rather than the traditional 24 frames per second, which has been the industry standard since the 1920s.

Director Peter Jackson also announced he will be shooting The Hobbit at 48 frames per second.

While the change in projectors at the Chaba wasn’t urgent, as most movies are still available on film, Wacko said it won’t be long before many movies can only be shown digitally.

“The whole industry is converting,” he said.