AMSTERDAM -- Europe's largest exhib chain Odeon-UCI plans to convert all its U.K. theaters to digital projection in the next three years, with the rest of its European sites following shortly after, the company revealed at Cinema Expo in Amsterdam Monday.

Drew Kaza, the company's director of digital development, and Gerald Buckle, digital development manager, said they were in negotiation with the major distribs, which would lead to a quarter of their screens being converted in 2009, with the rest of the chain following over two years.

Odeon-UCI has 840 screens in the U.K., 28% of the 3,550 screens in the country. It also operates 61 screens in Ireland, which it intends to convert, dependent on agreement with the site owners.

Once the U.K. deployment is complete, Kaza and Buckle will move on to screens in Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and Portugal.

Other U.K. exhibs, such as Vue, share Odeon's ambitions to move quickly to digital and want to make similar deals with the distribs, holding out the possibility that all of the U.K. could go digital in the next five years.

The U.K. is the prime driver of digital conversion in Europe, with analyst Screen Digest projecting the number of digital screens in the country likely to climb from 296 in 2007, 8.2% of the total, to 586 in 2008, 16.1%, and then jump to 2,927 in 2012, 78.5% of the total.

The poor availability of prints, particularly of pics from local producers, may put a brake on progress in some parts of Europe.

"It's not clear that in all the European markets the local players have got religion yet about digital," Kaza said. "The market for local content is important to us. We're going to have to get those guys switched on first."

Odeon-UCI has been beta-testing digital exhibition at theaters at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and Surrey Quays in central London, since February 2007 and that has given Kaza and Buckle the confidence to move ahead with the digital conversion of the whole group.

While the Odeon execs are bullish in their view of the opportunities provided by digital, the pervading mood among European exhibitors is fear -- fear to push into digital and run the risk of being beset by technical glitches and costs, and the fear of being left behind.

More than one speaker referred to the fact that the danger of being a pioneer is that you end up with arrows in your back.

Another speaker compared those who wouldn't convert to digital with the owners of sailing ships at the time that steam ships were being introduced.

Michael Lambrechtsen, director of the Dutch Distributors Assn., said that once critical mass of digital screens had been reached, the U.S. majors would stop providing 35 mm prints. There would then be a danger that the gap between Hollywood and the independent producers would widen as the cost of digital started to lock smaller pics out of the major chains.

This inevitably led to calls for government handouts to help convert theaters to digital, as has been the case in the U.K.

On a different subject, most exhibs were in agreement about the revenue possibilities of alternative content, with the revival of the matinee as a major source of revenue.

Opera and classic movies, which appealed more to retired folk, were being steered into nonprimetime periods and perking up the afternoon crowds.

(Archie Thomas contributed to this article.)