Kuwait - latest country to be "first" to switch to digital cinema

The list of countries planning to be 'first' to switch over all of its cinemas to digital is growing. Kuwait now joins the ranks of Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Norway in this non-Olympic competition sport. This is what an article Kuwait on the cusp of a D-cinema revolution from ArabianBusiness.com has to say:

Kuwait is set to become the first country in the world to boast an all-digital cinema (D-cinema) network, under an auspicious plan by the country's dominant cinema chain, Kuwait National Cinema Company (KNCC).

KNCC, which operates the Cinescape chain in Kuwait, recently contracted Indian company Real Image Media Technologies (RIMT) to develop a pilot D-cinema project installed in its flagship Kuwait City cinema multiplex. The project involved the installation of Real Image's Qube high definition XP-D DCI compliant digital cinema server and a Cinemeccanica 2K digital projector.

I'm not sure what they mean with statements like that the installation "surpasses the 2K quality standard agreed upon by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI)." (Do they mean 4K? I don't think so.) The article is right, however, that Kuwait like much of the Middle East is a unique market in that it has films from Hollywood, India (Bollywood) and Arabic Countries. As such, the deal is a coup for RIMT.

However, I'm less sure of the 'first country' thing. For a starter, I'd be tempted to take a handful of 2K projectors to Andorra claim to have switched over an entire country to digital. Kuwait, Singapore and Luxembourg are independent states, but they are also those odd questions in Trivial Pursuit's Geography category. The article itself tells the full story of the numbers, in that "KNCC plans to digitise 40 existing cinema screens and establish a further 50 digital theatres across Kuwait over the next 12 months." For it to count I'd say you need to get up to at least 100 for it to count.

So it's still a race between Ireland or Norway - and my money is firmly on Norway being first.