Virtual Print Fee (VPF)

Digital projection created a split incentive. The cost of converting fell on exhibitors, who had to buy projectors and servers for every screen. The savings fell on distributors, who stopped striking, shipping and destroying physical prints — a substantial per-screen cost on every release.

The VPF was the bridge. An integrator financed the equipment, and distributors paid a fee each time a title was booked onto a funded screen, roughly in the region of what a print would have cost them. Those payments serviced the financing until the equipment was paid off, after which the arrangement ended for that screen.

The schemes ran roughly a decade from the mid-2000s and have now substantially run their course. Most screens funded this way are long since out of their deals, and new installations are bought outright.

It stays relevant for two reasons. First, it is the reason a generation of projection equipment was bought on terms that constrained which titles a screen could play and which integrator it dealt with, and some of that contractual furniture is still lying around. Second, it explains the shape of the market: small and independent cinemas were often left out of VPF schemes or offered worse terms, which is a large part of why independent conversion lagged the circuits, and why the equipment refresh cycle now hits independents harder.