May's announcement by the UK Film Council that 209 cinemas around the country are turning digital is welcome news for the low-budget film industry. It makes obvious sense, after all: many of these films are shot and edited digitally, so the final transfer to 35mm film reel for conventional analogue projection seems as unnecessary as it is expensive.

This is clearly a case of existing technology staring an industry in the face - digital video - but the industry taking its time to realise what else to do with it - digital projection.

Now a somewhat similar situation has arisen with laser imaging in printers, but not quite in the way you might expect.

The lasers in laser printers do not actually print anything. Rather, the laser draws the image onto a photoconductive drum. The charged areas of the drum surface then attract toner particles which are duly transferred onto a sheet of paper and heat-bonded into place. The same trick can be done with an array of LEDs or, in the case of a photocopier, a bright lamp.

Intense, a Glasgow-based company specialising in opto-electronics, has come up with a different approach to using lasers for printing. It has developed a system of putting several lasers on a single chip, sitting side by side in parallel. Sorry, did I say several? I meant to say somewhere in the region of one hundred.

Once you have built up an array of these multi-laser chips, a platform that Intense calls INSlam, the potential for high resolution and precision is almost unimaginable by today's standards.

However, Intense does not envisage the chips being used as lasers in printers like those of today. Instead, it is looking at thermal print technology. Thermal printing typically uses a heated element that presses against special sheets of film impregnated with coloured wax or dyes, literally melting or evaporating the colours onto the paper.

Another type of thermal printing presses the metal element against heat-sensitive paper, effectively "burning" the image onto it, as seen in older fax machines and more recent portable printers. But in both of these techniques, the heating and cooling of the metal elements as the paper passes through is a dreadfully slow business. Switching lasers on and off, however, can be done at ultra high speed. As a result, INSlam could revive and re-invent thermal printing systems, which have long lingered in the "where-are-they-now" category of office peripherals.

If you replace the element with an array of INSlam lasers, the potential is for a printer that is not only faster but one that offers a significantly higher output resolution too.

Because of the usual economies of scale with developing technologies, it may take time for INSlam to get established. But if the technology takes off and can be produced cheaply enough, it could rival both inkjet and colour laser products.

All it takes is for one manufacturer to give it a try and we could have a new printing revolution on our desktops - or in our briefcases.