Digital cinema refers to adoption of digital technology within the film industry to distribute or project motion pictures as opposed to the historical use of reels of motion picture film, such as 35 mm film. Whereas film reels have to be shipped to movie theaters, a digital movie can be distributed to cinemas in a number of ways: over the Internet or dedicated satellite links, or by sending hard drives or optical discs such as Blu-ray discs.

Digital movies are projected using a digital video projector instead of a film projector, are shot using digital movie cameras and edited using a non-linear editing system (NLE). The NLE is often a video editing application installed in one or more computers that may be networked to access the original footage from a remote server, share or gain access to computing resources for rendering the final video, and to allow several editors to work on the same timeline or project.

Alternatively a digital movie could be a film reel that has been digitized using a motion picture film scanner and then restored, or, a digital movie could be recorded using a film recorder onto film stock for projection using a traditional film projector.

Digital cinema is distinct from high-definition television and does not necessarily use traditional television or other traditional high-definition video standards, aspect ratios, or frame rates. In digital cinema, resolutions are represented by the horizontal pixel count, usually 2K (2048×1080 or 2.2 megapixels) or 4K (4096×2160 or 8.8 megapixels). The 2K and 4K resolutions used in digital cinema projection are often referred to as DCI 2K and DCI 4K. DCI stands for Digital Cinema Initiatives.

As digital-cinema technology improved in the early 2010s, most theaters across the world converted to digital video projection.