ATLANTA--The worlds of IT and entertainment nudged just a little closer when Cisco Systems, Qwest Communications International, and 20th Century Fox showed the new movie "Titan A.E." to an audience of 1,800 Cisco customers at a digital screening here. Absent from the event was the familiar celluloid projector that has always served moviegoers.

"Titan" hit the screen as a 42-Gbyte file downloaded to a digital projector via a Cisco 7140 virtual private network router from Qwest's CyberCenter in Burbank, Calif. Put in perspective, the film's file is more than 20 times bigger than a typical MP3 file and took about 2.5 hours to download.

The technology for the digital screening of motion pictures has arrived, says Larry Lang, VP of service provider marketing for Cisco. "We've taken the technological question off the table," he says. It's another story entirely, however, to convince Hollywood to eliminate film distribution and replace it with IT equipment and digital servers, which run about $100,000 each. Anyone for a $25 bag of popcorn?