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Camcorder Jamming Devices Announced
Adam Carrington writes "I'm definitely not behind things like DRM, but Virginia-based Cinea has an idea that I do support... jamming camcorders in movie theaters. CNET has some interesting details on how they plan on going about it. They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft." This might be the technology that drives the stake in analog projection.
Slashdot Article
Ending this form of piracy will result in the Hong Kong pirates coming up with better ways to steal movies. Hopefully the next time I download a movie off Kazaa it will be better quality than the last one I downloaded which was made from a camcorder. While I could wait for the DVD rip I prefer watching recent movies without paying
Cinea are the ones who brought us DIVX (the circuit city DVD thing, not the codec with the winking smiley).
They are E-V-I-L
..because we all know how those high-quality camcorder-bootlegs are robbing millions from the movie producers.
Any pirated content from a camcorder picture from a movie theatre is going to be really bad. Nobody much is going to watch it, and if they do , they're probably enough of a fan to go see the movie when it is on at the theatres where they live anyway.
This will deal a well-deserved shot to the disgusting practice called "telesync". Let us pray that from hereon in, all our pirated movies will be DVD rips.
Telesyncs are *SO* 1985.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
... one that turns off the timestamp and REC on the LCD. They always get in the way! ;-)
Just think of how much bandwidth will be saved by people not bootleging StarWarez Episode III, at least not till the screeners come out.
camcorders to rip off content, ok, nice, who cares.
but to jam mobile fones, that would be a good thing,
and actually increase the value of the experience
for consumers, not just for the movie houses.
for that matter, how about jamming screaming babies,
and that person in front of me with the big head,
and the person behind me who keeps kicking my seat.
rant off.
"Any copies made from these devices will show the disruptive pattern."
And epileptics will sieze.
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999.
I'm getting out of the way right now before the flames hit. Trolls and Editors first! Run for your lives!
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
I want to see "They Live" relreased in digital format.
No, subliminal messages don't work, but you could still print messages on the screen (invisible to the naked eye) using this system, and then only people trying to pirate the movie with a camcorder would be treated to the messages like:
OBEY
NO ALIENS LIVE AMONG US
and so on. Then, they turn themselves in when they reveal the subliminal messages to the press! Pure genius. Alternatively, you could sell sunglasses that let you read the subliminal messages (they'd have digital camcorders built in with displays on the inside of the glasses,) AND let you see that hilarry rosen is really an alien.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Instantly, the story was rushed to the forefront of the other waiting stories. I can see this put to use:
WarCraft IV Announced; Microsoft Sucks!
Matrix 2.0 Details; Bill Gates hit in face with pie
NPR reports bin Laden dead; New Microsoft IIS bug found
Ah, Slashdot.
A winner is you!
While I understand that the media conglomerates are opposed to people stealing their content (which costs millions of dollars to create), most people who purchase $2.99 "ShakyCam" copies of new release films off the street probably wouldn't have the money to actually *go* to the movies and spend $8.50 on a ticket, $6.50 for popcorn, and $5.00 for a soda.
This is similar to how the 12-year old kid who obtains a pirated copy of Photoshop to fool around with isn't really causing a net loss for Adobe because he wouldn't be able to shell-out the $650.00 (or whatever it is these days) for Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I made the mistake of purchasing a boot legg tape once and it was o obvious that someone sat in a theater with a camcorder. Even the sound sounded like a microphone in a card board box. To be honest I wouldn't spend mondey on developing this product because the quality of these tapes are horrific. Plus with digital video being available on the net who needs to do that anymore. I saw the chinese version (subtitled) of starwars episode one while it was still in the theaters.
Since Americans generally are apalled by the thought of voyeurs and law enforcement alike capturing images without 'proper' permission, then a weapon like this seems like it would be incredibly useful.
if it's later discovered that this screen interference can be removed by drawing a line along the bottom edge of the screen with a .39 cent magic marker.
Somehow better mousetraps just don't seem to be the answer.
But if people can't record movies, then how am I going to download my 100 movies a day off of KaZaA???
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
This ticket is a license to watch one movie. You may occupy one seat. Due to recent problems with piracy, this cinema has installed a DRM enforcement facility. Your memory of the film will be erased when you leave the cinema, to prevent you violating our intellectual property rights by telling people what you saw. The wearing of hats or sunglasses constitute use of a circumvention device, the penalty set forth being life imprisonment.
Enjoy your film.
I would go to movies if people knew how to SHUT THEIR DAMN MOUTHS! I went to see Spiderman and I had a jack-ass next to me who wanted to impress his friends that were across the theatre, by talking all through the movie... putting in his comments and thoughts. I leaned over and said "Excuse me, could you shut the hell up?" and he said "OH sorry!" and kept talking. Went to see Star Wars Episode 2... Baby started crying.. for 2 minutes until people starting shouting at the parents! Went to see Lord of the Rings. Jerk sitting next to me kept talking. On and on... EVERY movie I go to is spoiled by jack assses talking. This is why I've stopped going to the movies. It's not about price. It's not about the "evil" movie companies. It's about enjoyment. I get more enjoyment by sitting in my room and watching a grainy pirated copy of "the others"... because no one is talking and interupting my movie!
They claim that they're going to introduced controlled disturbances that the human eye can't see, but a digital device would, like the sync lines you see when recording a TV screen.
So wouldn't it be possible to record at double the frame rate and eliminate the bad frames? Or if it's just a preprogrammed watermarking technique, strip it out?
One problem is that there are a lot of different CCD chips out there. Certainly there are some that have a lot of "lag" that would not be affected as much by this.
The other problem is that these artifacts could be cleaned up with digital processing. With giant hard drives and fast processors, all that is needed is an app to do it.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Boo hoo! So the MPAA high-rollers will have a few million less in their coffers. Is this a problem? Not at all. Poor Jack...
I think it's rather funny that people do this to begin with. I feel not one pang of guilt that the MPAA is losing money.
Camcorder-copied movies look and sound like shit and are pretty much unwatchable anyways.
That's my opinion of them at least.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
I thought the first working prototype of DeCSS was written for windwos?
Hiding the lookup tables in PNGs and the like aside, wasn't the first viewer written for Windows?
Why not just stick a turnip in each ear?
www.pile-a-pish.com
3 days after the US release until Epsiode 1 VCDs where widespread in South East Asia. The producers must have taken the very first flight out after the first showing, and then started large-scale dupliation immediately.
Some friends of mine - Star Wars fans - were backpacking at that very time. They wanted to wait until they could see the movie in a proper theater but found this almost impossible as every other bar/ restaurant/ hotel was showing the movie...
Tor
While jamming the screaming babies, etc. may be a bit difficult, I don't see why phone-jamming should be too much of a problem.
We already know that tunnels cause dead areas in cell networks. All we have to do is create this artificially in the theatre. Is it possible to create an electromagnetic jamming field that would surround a single theatre in a multiplex? That way if you absolutely must use a cell phone, you can go out into the hall or the lobby to make your call.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Shadow
I must say, it is quite amazing the lengths that Intellectual Property manufacturers will go to in ofrder to "plug the analog hole". I know that there have been stories about how movies appear on Kazaa the same day the sneak preview has been shown because somebody brought in a videa camera and filmed it, but please. These videos are of terrible quality, and only help promote interest in the movie - "Hey all you hyped up fans - look at this crappy copy you can see two days early - really whets your appetite for the real thing, doesn't it?" I am just amazed that people would go to the extent of adding significant cost and complexity in order to prevent a very small group from trading crappy copies.
And most improtantly, I am sure that there will be a hack to get around the distortion - whether it is a run-time hack that fixes it as you record (difficult) or go back with some sort of filter to post-process it (maybe easier), I am sure it will happen. But bottom line, it won't matter - the people who watch these video-taped copies aren't in it for the fidelity, they are in it for seeing it first - a little more distortion won't stop them.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Just line the outside of your camera lens with Post-It notes and you'll be fine...Wait a minute! Did I just violate the DMCA??? Please disregard the previous statement.
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
You're kidding - people bring babies into the cinema where you are?
I'd have 'em thrown out as quickly as possible. And I have an eight-month old daughter...
Cheers,
Ian
Can they come up with a device to stop bozos using *flash* photography in cinemas?
When Jurassic Park first opened, I went to see it at the biggest screen in London, and *every* *single* *time* a dinosaur appeared on screen, some idiot near the front took a flash picture.
I wish I could have seen his face when he discovered all his pictures were blank.
its doing essentially the same as in the movie Spaceballs
An attendant is standing at the door to the cinema and will pour jam (strawberry seems to be the most effective) all over the lens
Jamming cell phones in a theater/restaurant/library/etc is illegal. Violates FCC regulations.
Best Slashdot Co
According to Cinea's grant abstract, the motion picture industry loses some $3 billion a year due to piracy, including the sale of illegal copies made using camcorders in theaters. The company predicted that its efforts could cut movie piracy by 50 percent.
That number may be high. Leaks from theaters frequently involve copies that are created in cooperation with insiders, rather than footage shot surreptitiously from the fifth row. Schumann conceded that the 50 percent number is not based on thorough market research but is simply "our own estimate."
NIST must be having a going out of bizness sale or something if this is acceptable language in a winning grant proposal.
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
I can't imagine that hiding a camcorder-stopping signal in the picture being projected from the back of the theater WOULDN'T adversely affect the quality of the picture in someway.
Camcorders are much more sensitive to infrared light than the human eye... why not just mount some infrared strobes in the front of the theater, aimed out at the audience? The people won't notice it, but the camcorders would effectively be blinded.
"The company "will modify the timing and modulation of the light used to create the displayed image such that frame-based capture by recording devices is distorted,"
This is basically how macrovision works for VCRs.
-- derby
Yeah, all five of them...
The rest of us preferred clinging to the illusion that once we buy a copy of a movie we get to do with it as we please.
However, we can thank Divx for some memorable Penny-Arcade comics ("I'm about to go from zero to drunk in twenty dollars.")
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Maybe one could blind the cameras with infrared light. I know that my camcorder can see my remote control for my TV. So could you blind the cameras that way also? It's not a digital camera so I don't know how those react and I guess you could put a filter on the camera to block it out.
Well, just an idea that hit me, it's Friday and I want to go home and install FreeBSD.
my sig
The trouble is that, with this particular problem of movie pirating, it has to be 100% effective or it's no good.
It doesn't matter if they find ways to block 95% of camcorders from being able to read the signal, since most or all pirated copies of a given movie come from one point source, so as long as there is *any* camcorder or other solution out there, the copy will be made, and once one copy is made, that's the ballgame, since VCD-Rs and mpegs will propogate from there.
Of course, the vast majority of these copies come from Asian countries, and are often recorded in poorer neighborhoods. I'd like to see how their business plan will get this digital protection mechanism into every theater in the East, regardless of the economic level.
If they only manage to get it into 80% or even 98% of the theaters, then it doesn't do any good at all.
Kevin Fox
I'd prefer a place where I can watch a movie without getting radiation poisoning / cancer / illnesses / (insert condition here).
I have an idea, lets jam so much radiation around us that we all become sterile. That'd be great!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
According to their grant, the movie industry loses $3 billion a year to piracy and that Cinea's system will cut piracy by 50%. Considering that most piracy comes from insiders and not the theater camcorder person, how did Cinea come up with 50%? Was it through market research? Nope: It's "our own estimate." Well, that makes me feel better.
Don't they just need to project a lot of infra red onto the screen - we can't see it but most camcorders will. Too simple?
AJ
Now, a screaming baby jammer, that I can agree with.
Will these camcorder jamming devices be affordable enough to buy/rent one for my wedding?
I thought I would save my future kids the embarrassment... (look what I found in the attic, kids, it's a V-C-R. And look, old videos of my wedding!)
Seriously, how obvious is Cinea's solution? Movie/video producers deal with scan lines from television/computer screens everyday. This project seems almost stupidly simple.
Wondeful, this means another patent/licensing issue...proprietary film stocks, camera technologies...wonderful. Just what we need.
And who knows...perhaps the new light patterns will trigger a few epileptic seizures, like that anime program from years ago...
Something tells me that they'd be saving more money if the studios simply fired their legal departments and gave up on catching "the little guy" entirely.
Looks like we just found a use for the technology that alien abducties always told us about. We didn't listen and just assumed that they were nutters, now they were right the whole time.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Ok.. let's see.. he want -every- cinema to install this gadget which no doubt will cost money, and might degrade the image quality..
Now why would Charlie Cinemaowner want to install this? No reason at all.
True, the studios often own the cinemas and can force him to install the gadget, but that's no guarantee that he'll actually have the thing plugged in.
Not to mention that many Asian camcorder grabs are done with the concent of the cinema owner.
(The ones where the cinema isn't fulled with
people speaking Javanese or whatever)
It's just stupid. Need I say it's not going to stop piracy,
it's just going to cost the money for the theaters.
(And that means even more expensive movie tickets!)
This is ridiculous, they won a 2 million dollar grant to pursue this? Making me very very angry.
"The customers... loved it... it was a great technology that didn't get great market support."
You don't get one without the other. Your new technology is interesting and may even disrupt piracy for a while. However, that period of time will be remarkably shorter than the time it takes you to develop your technology.
WHY don't they look for them? Cams aren't the smallest of shapes, a little enforcement of theatre policies would go a long way.
Also, who says flickering monitors don't cause eye damage? Just because we can't easily see it doesn't mean our brain doesn't.
Stop fscking with my eyes!
Tournament Management Online &
"There's a difference in the way a camcorder and the human eye see the world," Schumann said.
Yeah, a difference that will last forever.
I live in southern california and our local edwards theater shows approximately 20 mins of commercials before the movie ?!?! this pisses me off since i'm still paying $8.50 for tickets, $3.00 for a coke, and $4.50 for a box of popcorn
There is a fundamental problem with encrypting things for mass consumption:
/. article about ebooks being decrypted? the 'Print Scrn' button on your keyboard takes care of that...
At some point, it has to be decrypted and viewed. As long as that happens, then there won't be any way to prevent people copying it.
Remember the
The same thing with this. People can develop a program that eliminates the screen flicker, or turn down the gain on their camcorders or tap into the feed before the projection ocurrs or any number of things...
Another useless arms race.
My $0.25
There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Besides, the people who don't care about the (piss-poor) quality of 'camcorded' movies aren't going to care about some stupid watermark floating on the screen.
Another piracy-battling idea that will be ignored (by pirates) and yet make lots of $$$ for the company that brings it to market.
It seems that piracy-battling solutions are the only thing that makes $$$ while not working. That and Congress.
I made the mistake of reading your post. It was such low quality. It bad phrasing and not much point. Even the spelling was poor. With digital dictionaries available on the 'net there's no need to do that any more. I saw the English version (substandard) while it was still dynamic.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I was never vary impressed whan viewing a movie which was taped from within a theater. Neither tha audio nor video quality was even close to satisfactory.
This will force a new era in piracy. We've already seen the beginning with the availability of the second LoTR movie on the net before it hits theaters. All this means is that pirates will have to accept a small reduction in their proffit margins since they'll now have to bribe productuin and editing staff for advance copies of films, which will inevitably be of higher quality than those tapes by audience members in theaters.
I'm not entirely clear on why NIST is handing out grants oor research in this field though. Seems to me the products resulting from this research will have applications in limited areas of the security industry (in addition to the initial target of the motion picture industry) but have no larger societal benefit so they shouldn't be handing out grants in thie area.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Result: S/W available only as compelte .iso image with crack implemented.
Going to make theater movies unrecordable?
Result: P2P shared movies are all nicely ripped screaner DVD releases.
DRM, cleaning up the warez and vids available on P2P.
I would venture to guess that the liability factor would be too great when someone's pacemaker stopped as they passed through the field. Or whatever artificial medical device, etc....
Thank goodness this horrible problem will finally be dealt with. I'm tired of going to the movie theater and having to sit behind that guy with the little camcorder silently taping a bad copy of an equally bad movie. I always move to sit near those people who talk incessantly through the movie cause you know, that's what I pay $8.50 for. And besides, everyone knows that you wait for the DVD rips to come out on Kazaa and not to bother with the camcorder copies. Geez.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
No, but when you answer it and start talking there is a problem.
Or even when you get up to go outside and answer it.
If you can't be without your phone then DON'T GO TO MOVIES right then.
"Morons, your train is leaving."
First blind guy to be given a new set of video camera cyborg eyes leaves hospital.
"At last! I can finally go to the movies and find out what I was missing all these years"
After half an hour of sitting in the theatre, right after the ads finish, his eyes suddenly start streaming snow to his visual cortex.
"Sweet Jesus! I'm blind again - farewell cruel world!"
*BANG*
All things in moderation; including moderation
It's illegal. This company figured a way to stop it.
So, you can't download the latest Lord Of the Rings DiVX? Cry me a river.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Does this mean that Lavar Burton won't be able to see himself in the upcoming Star Trek film? What about Lee Majors? How will his bionic eye react to such anti-piracy measures? I think the pulsing light may give him a siezure. How would you like to have him sitting behind your when he goes into a fit when the show starts. His bionic leg would kick you right through the screen. You can be damn sure I won't be going to any movies until this technology is better tested.
'Same speed C but faster'
As anyone who has introduced themselves to photography as a hobby knows, it is difficult for an amatuer to take high quality photographs.
I'm sure that with a flat subject some aspects are easier, but there's still a lot of variables that would get in the way.
Motion distortion from the camcorder's movement. Of course, you could use a tripod, but that might arouse some suspicion.
Ambient lighting from the floor guide lights, the dimmed exit / wall / ceiling lights, light entering from the doorways would all reduce the quality of possible recordings.
Audience noise will interfere with your sound recording, and I doubt anyone's going to set up 6 microphones and mix the inputs to properly capture the DOLBY sound.
In short, I doubt that any improvements in the display quality will remove these nagging recording issues, nor will technology remove them. All in all, the copy is always going to be second-rate, lower-fidelity.
Meanwhile strobing motion picture screens will probably give many audience members headaches.
Does every article on slashdot REALLY need to show the poster's bias against Microsoft?
really....grow up people
My friend lived in New York and he bought a bootleg copy of the movie "Ghost", yeah the one where they mold clay (don't ask why). Anyways it was still in theatres at the time, and when he got home he put it in the vcr. Well all it was was some guy with a sheet over his head making "ohhhhh" sounds for 20 minutes. Super funny the fact that the guy who sold the bogus bootleg went to the trouble of filming himself for 20 minutes being a dumbass! ahhh it can only happen in New York.
Well, they could use this
Who is John Galt?
Is that, with CCD jamming in place, the best way to pirate the on screen movie will be via a 16mm analogue film camera and then teleciné to digital back at base !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Hmm...true.
How 'bout making the theatre into a Faraday cage? Blocks the transmissions, but does't have any active components.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
flash back to watching my first rip of LOTR... gorgeous love scene in the woods... Liv Tyler looking stunning (in an elven sort of way)...
and the cameraman burps. gawd.
MPEG artifacts, I can deal with. but please no more of this.
We went to see XXX not long ago and a couple of losers sat down in front of us with an infant. The kid mighta been six, eight months old. An infant.
He/She -- whatever -- cried through the whole first part of the movie. Then something weird happened. Some noob in the projector booth flipped the volume switch up -- way up.
The move was painfully loud. My buddy Winky, ordinarily not a do-gooder, started mumbling about the annoyingly loud sound and wondering if it's actually *safe* for the baby to be there.
My other buddy, Drummer Todd, said it wasn't our business and we should just sit back and chill. In the Impala on the way over, we *did* say that we wanted a loud fucking movie with a lot of explosions.
Well, with the sound jacked, it was a loud fucking movie.
So Winky actually got up, went out into the lobby, and -- we learned all this later -- told one of the people at the popcorn booth that there was an infant in the movie and that with the sound as loud as it was, it might be a good idea to (a) turn down the sound, and (b) eject the infant.
So a few minutes later Winky comes back, sits down, and a few moments after *that*, a manager and a little guy in a red vest come looking for the info. They're shining their little light sticks all over the place trying to figure out where Winky was sitting.
Drummer Todd is telling all of us to shut the fuck up and chill, that the sound's fine, that the baby's not our business. Winky starts signalling for the ushers and a guy two rows behind us tells Winky to sit the fuck down.
Winky ignores him and nearly trips over Drummer Todd trying to get out in the aisle to flag the ushers. The couple in front of us -- the couple with the crying baby -- actually turn around to see what's going on and tell me -- me! -- to quiet down.
All this is going on while Vin Diesel has just let on that he really *is* a secret agent to the hot Russian chick while they're sitting in the cafe. She's explaining to him that there's a sniper outside and is about to cap him when he walks out. So they get up, walk over to the waiter, and whack the silver tray out of his hand. Now, it's a fine scene -- a pivotal scene in the movie -- but imagine this scene with the sound turn up so fucking loud you can't really hear anything. And then imagine a metal tray clattering and bullets flying -- all in 6.1 DTS -- or whatever they have. It was absolutely mind-numbingly loud. Truly, the single loudest experience I have *ever* had in my sixteen years of life.
Anyway, the ushers locate Winky, head on over to us, and ask the couple with the infant to please leave. They don't want to leave and it looks like a confrontation is gonna happen. All the while they're arguing with the ushers, the kid -- the fucking infant -- is balling his/her -- whatever -- head off. Balling and balling.
Finally, common sense prevails. The couple get up, glare at Winky, and -- with the infant in tow -- leave the theater. The ushers nod toward Winky, Winky nods back, and Drummer Todd tells him to sit the fuck down.
And a few moments later, the sound drops back down to normal.
And that was that. Very weird.
But I agree: forget the camcorders. Turn off the mobile phones.
And for the love of god: don't bring infants into films like XXX. It's insane.
has never seen spaceballs
Now with all the amatures with handhelds out of business, we can now get professional rips of new movies by organized crime syndicates! No longer will we have to sit through grainy VHS camcorder copies of Hollywoods latest tripe. The mafia (asian and otherwise) will now have a viable buisiness model for peddling their illegal wares. Throw in P2P networks as a method of distribution for the geeks and we can't loose! Thank goodness for copy protection!
So, this only affects images on the screen. Also, it's mad expensive and not portable. So what's the worry? anti-copywright-infringement
Sounds to me like a third-party filter could remove any distortion involved, under the guise of 'better quality picture'. This sounds about as half-brained a plan as the original DIVX. How about jamming the people who talk all the damned time during the movie?
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
or some form of pulse modulated laser. Best still would just pick a spectral response that the cameras see that humans do not- easily accomplished.
Don't Jam, just put copper mesh in the walls and make the theater a big Faraday Cage. No jamming needed so your not violating FCC regs and the RF won't get in or out. A company I used to work for had one in a lab for RF testing, no pager or cell phone could receive a signal inside.
I've seen the same effect in older buildings that used a metal mesh for plaster lath. I had to put an 802.11 AP in every room of an old house because the RF couldn't get through the walls. Cell phones wouldn't work either. Same effect in buildings whose glass windows have a high metal content.
I really don't think further deterioration in quality is going to hurt the pirates. Its not as if their current versions are without considerable disruptions. The only way to effectively stop people taping movies is to find a way to completely disable the ability of a camcorder or other recording device to function. And to be effective it would have to work in all types of theatres, and be cost effective enough for even the smallest theatres in remote countries to afford. Or maybe even give the technology to the them for free.
While they're at it, I hope they block cell phones too. The last couple of movies I went to, people actually took calls throughout the whole thing. One guy took five of them!! And of course he had one of those cutesy ring tones.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
A: It's silly to jam camcorders. 90% of piracy is made of near to genuine copies and not of "screen" copies. No matter the efforts, every "screen" copy is bad enough that even if you get your lovely blockbuster such way you wil probably avoid to look at it.
B: "screen" copies are not a product of modern piracy. They were here since videoplayer/recorders. The only difference Divx;) made was that the quality of a "screen" copy was a little better than the cassete. Anyway, people never loved "screens" and don't love them till now.
C: "screens" are usually a vector to move people to theaters. At least in the region where I live. There is a big difference seeing a good film on the monitor/TV and going to a good cinema to see it. However prices on a good cinema are not so cheap to risk going on every silly film. I remember that "The Matrix" was a box-record just because everyone has seen it before. At least, for the first week, the cinema here was stormed by a crowd of fans who knew that the Matrix has you...
So, what will be the consequences of jamming camcorders, I only guess. People go to cinema for quality. And people are different. I hope that this "jamming" will not affect some people I know about. People who are sensitive to light and frequencies with some deviation from the norm. Even most "normal" people are able to have some good deviations in their capacity to see things. I know this because I saw a lot of fantastic things while working with lots of monitors and people. So I wonder how this "jamming" would reflect on the quality of the shows.
...will stop audience members from videotaping digital movies off theater screens.
Ok, so this really won't be useful for another 10 years anyway. I mean, after all, how many digital theaters are there now? Additionally, what's the likelyhood many of these bootleg movies were even taped in a digital theater. I know we don't yet have a digital theater where I live. And it doesn't look like we are going to get one any time soon.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
The article makes much to do about the future success of anti-pirating measures in the movie theatre. It cites the millions lost (and to be gained) by protection schemes that are just over the event horizon. But why does it back up these pictures of the future with a laundry list of encryption schemes that never succeeded, encryption schemes that were broken, companies that went bankrupt chasing this market, and companies that are losing money / face chasing this market? All in all, the evidence doesn't seem to support thier statements.
Face it, if you're likely to receive a call that is so stupendously important that it couldn't wait until you pick up your messages, then perhaps you shouldn't have gone to the movies in the first place.
It is when you answer it and start giving a running commentary to the person on the other end.
It seems to me that people who pirate movies with camcorders are small fish for the MPAA, relatively speaking. But even so, this is the right way for them to do it. It's perfectly fair to develop anti-copying technologies, just as it's fair for others to develop technologies that defeat anti-copying techniques.
It's the legal moves by the MPAA that I disagree strongly with. This battle belongs in the technological arena, not the courtrooms.
I want one for my car for the next time I'm driving in D.C. Go ahead run red lights and speed all you want! Those cameras privacy advocates are worried about? Bah, null and void, million dollar paperweights on a pole.
Next time I'm pulled over, that nifty little camera in the front of the police cruiser won't be used agaisnt me in a court of law.
>
They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft
So that's how you get a story posted on Slashdot.
Ford Dealer: The new 2004 Mustang will save you 50% on your gas bill as it gets 45 miles per gallon. It also provides 300 horsepower, 285 footpounds of tourque, and goes from 0-60 in just 4.8 seconds.
Customer: Wow! When did these numbers come out? I haven't seen any road tests yet.
Dealer: Oh, this isn't based on research. It's just our estimate.
Or you could do what I do when I want to see a movie and might need to take an emergency call- sit in the back row in an aisle seat.
How does a guy get a name like 'Winky?'
Anyway, I'll agree. The idea of 'jamming' camcorders is insane. How many times have you actually been bothered by someone with a camcorder?
The answer is none. Anybody desperate enough to film the movie is gonna be as low-key and low-in-the-seat as possible.
It's the mobile phones and beepers that oughta be jammed -- in movie theaters, restaurants, and anywhere where you, the cell phone owner, are surrounded with people who are not using cell phones and aren't even thinking about cell phones.
There are some legitimate reasons to have a cell phone. Doctors who are on call for instance. All that's needed is some courtesy: set your pager to vibrate, step out into the hall to answer.
If you're a teenager and you are obnoxious in the theater you'll be asked to leave. I don't see why this can't apply to adults. If your cellphone is a nuicanse in the theater then you should be escorted out.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
you'd rather have no ads and be paying $10.50 for a ticket, $4.00 for a coke, and $6.00 for a box of popcorn?
While the idea may technically be feasible, I'm sure a device like this would cost thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. Next they would have to convince *EVERY* movie theater to use it, else this whole thing is defeated to begin with. I wonder how they plan on convincing movie theater operators in Asia to spend that kind of money..
And even if all that happened, it'd still be at least 5 to 10 years down the road, by then there will be camcorders that can maybe record several hundred pictures a second.
Nothing to worry about...
Reinard
Beleive it - in Utah, where its painfully normal for early 20 somethings to have babies, they always bring them to theaters.
To paraphrase Chris Rock: you can either get your kid on, or your movie on, but not both. If you decide to spit out a kid at the age of 22, you pretty much give up your ability to do anything but sit and look at the walls for the next 6 years.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
That's easy, just increase the O2 content in the room. As I understand the process of screaming implies hyperventalation. Can't do that in an 80% O2 environment. Might even make the movies seem a little better. No smoking, please :)
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
is this paragraph:
"There's a difference in the way a camcorder and the human eye see the world," Schumann said. "We've figured out some ways to exploit that. The trick is to make sure there is no negative impact on the viewing experience for the audience."
I would completely quit going to see movies at the theatre for $10 a show if they start to flicker to avoid copying. I'm already ticked off that most theatres are run by 17 year olds who can't focus properly.
S
Hackers are reportedly already working on a new codec, dubbed "Cinea ;)" which is based on Microsoft's MPEG 5 video codec.
I wonder if this "technology" is going to exacerbate the propensity for seziures in epileptics?
Refresh rates (on some monitors & televisions) already have this effect and I know a few folks who've narrowly missed having seziures during quick back and forth scene changes in some film theatres.
Sure, sucks to be the epileptic, but it sucks even more to be the one trusted to protect them from themselves while in a crwoded theatre watching a movie in what used to appear to be a mostly safe theatre environment.
Your complaints about being offended offend me.
Or perhaps they release the film in US cinemas before the VHS release :-)
"They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft" ...as if that somehow adds substance or credibility to the article.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...$3.00 for a coke, and $4.50 for a box of popcorn
What, you don't smuggle food in under your coat?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
I love their math:
"According to Cinea's grant abstract, the motion picture industry loses some $3 billion a year due to piracy, including the sale of illegal copies made using camcorders in theaters."
I bet this is how that was calculated:
- Seeing a show costs $10.
- "Pirate" tapes sold on the street: 18.75 million
- Said tapes viewed by 4 distinct people
- each viewer sees the movie four times.
So:
18,750,000 tapes
* 4 viewers
-------------
75,000,000
* 4 views per viewer
-------------
300,000,000 views total
* 10 dollars to see the movie, legit
-------------
3,000,000,000 dollars "lost" to piracy
Give me a break.
S
This actually sounds like a good idea to me. What I find most interesting is that they can control the disruptive patterns generated. Can they put any arbitrary image in the pattern? If so, the MPAA should contact the goatse.cx guy immediately!
Since becoming parents, cinema is the one thing that we (my fiancee and I) have had to give up. It's utterly unfair on everybody else, and it's also unfair on the baby. Everywhere else we can still go - even restaurants, because if our daughter becomes upset one of us can just go outside for a while and settle her back down again. But cinema? Nope.
Cheers,
Ian
My consumer camcorder has a variety of settings that affect the way it "sees" rapid motion. When transferring 8 mm films through one of those cheap reflector boxes, for example, the normal settings give a pulsating and unevenly bright image because of strobing. But if I use one of the "simulate slow shutter" settings, I can get very good results. The LONGEST of these settings does smear and blur motion, but one of the intermediate settings removes the flicker while adding very little motion blur.
And this is just a cheap consumer camcorder--and it's a feature that it has ALREADY.
I can easily believe that Cinea might be able to introduce short "tachistoscopic" artifacts that might screw up a camcorder on its normal settings, but if the camcorder's effective "simulated slow shutter speed" is 1/20 of a second or so, the artifacts will have to last 1/20th of a second or so to be visible to the camera--and at that speed, they'd be pretty visible to the naked eye.
I find it very hard to believe that the people who take videos off a movie screen don't know how to adjust their camcorders. Or that, if the Cinea scheme becomes popular, camcorder vendors will not respond with settings that are called by some other name but nudge, nudge, wink, wink designed to overcome the problem. Or that it can't be taken care of by some kind of digital processing afterward (analogous to using timebase correctors on analog VCR copy-protection schemes.)
In other words, it's a scam perpetrated on theatre owners.
Also, undoubtedly the "camcorder-jamming" artifacts are actually just as visible as, say, dirt specks flashing quickly by on individual frames of a dirty print. It may not make a lay audience walk out and demand their money back--they don't do that for dirty prints now. But people will be aware that the image quality isn't what it should be.
To a critical eye, DLP is currently SLIGHTLY inferior to traditional film projection in some regards (superior in others). Anything that tips that balance is going to be a problem. If the ordinary UNCRITICAL lay audience judges that "perfect" digital DLP actually isn't quite as good as 35mm and starts thinking of it as a cheap-and-cheesy alternative. I would think a cinema manager would be nuts to shell out a couple of hundred thousand for a DLP setup then add anything that would make the image quality worse.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That could make for some pretty good copy protection at the movies! (along with blind viewers) But hey, all technology comes at a cost. right?
free ipod? yeah.
Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite. You don't need to be reachable immediately at the press of a button all the time.
-30-
I can get around this protection scheme with only 2 black markers. The first marker is for taking dictation, the second is for rapidly drawing pictures of what's on the screen.
They'd have to blink the film A LOT in order to break that scheme.
a screaming baby jammer, that I can agree with
What's a baby jammer, and would you agree with ones that baby jammers that don't scream, or is screaming a prerequisite for your agreement?
>It bad phrasing and not much point
Yeah and your prose is much more elegant.
Who did you have to blow to get modded to a 2?
I know its probably hard to get this through your skull but the world goes beyond north america so if someone (I presume) is writing in his second or third language and you can understand what he says but are annoyed by typos or syntax, then I suggest your get anal-retentive self a good colonic, it sounds like you badly need it.
You might have time to wordcheck your posts beforehand but most people have a life.
gg
And the pirates thought they could money by not bribing people in the movie production studio to get originals to copy. Looks like they will have to keep paying and keep releasing before Hollywood.
Of course if people did the whole camcorder thing it could put the pirates out of business and reduce the outside earnings of those who take the bribes.
This is a pirate protetion project.
Look on the bright side - every dollar Hollywood spends on pointless snake oil, is one less dollar they can spend buying politicians. :)
They don't care about jamming phones. Phones ringing do not figure into their perceived revenue loss.
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry
standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999. The recording industry,
meanwhile, was stymied last year in its bid to create a music copy protection system when
academic researchers defeated a proposed watermarking standard.
Not to be paranoid, but that statement reads very negatively against Linux.
i hope everybody noticed they got a $2 million dollar grant from NIST to develop this technology.
your hard earned tax dollars, not going to towards things like a faster internet, faster genome sequencing, or an aerospace plane, but instead to pay to develop a technology that will make some guy rich helping hollywood fight a fringe form of copy protection that will be dwarfed by the possibilities of direct digital piracy that will be opened up by the digital distribution/projection infrastructure this proposed technology depends upon.
wtf.
-- p
Why so much, and why didn't the MPAA foot the bill? It's not like this technology is going to benefit anyone else. Why are taxpayers footing the bill?
My simple design for this would be a strobe light (or maybe an arc light capable of producing IR) at the back of the theater, projected through a piece of silicon or other cheap IR filter. Since camcorders are sensitive to IR and people aren't, the recording will have any annoying artifact you want to project.
So, where do I claim my $2 million?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
How else am I going to get my pre-released videos on Divx, with sub-titles? Once they implement this, it will take them about a year to find another way. Meanwhile, I lost a years worth of movies :(
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
It seems like this kind of technology could be used to disrupt surveillance cameras, like those redlight cameras. Hopefully all CCDs would be affected, then we can start to take back some privacy.
http://www.crgazette.com/go_article/0,1336,42457%2 52D1,00.html?cks=0
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I think the point was - who would WANT to download a DIVX of a camcorded movie? You are way too uptight about this Wakko.. or should I say, Jack V?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Gee we've never seen THIS troll on slashdot before.
m00.
In my area (the Greater Toronto Area), several organizations have been setting up special movie showings specifically for parents with babies, where of course everyone will be much more tolerant, etc. This seems like a fantastic idea to me.
Having said that, there is a limit that parents with babies should be segregated. A couple of friends I know are extremely considerate and always settle their daughter down in public places (i.e. they don't do the "I can't hear a thing" routine that many ignorant people do), however recently while at a loud roadhouse restaurant (the kind where everyone is basically yelling) an ignorant oaf offered the "suggestion" that they don't bring their baby in public, etc.
What about people with epilepsy?
It doesn't matter if it's visible to the human eye or not. If adding extra frames that degrade the quality of the film causes a strobe-light effect of any sort, you can set off some serious seizures.
I hope they do a lot of research with this before implementing it.
I always have a problem when the content producers claim to be losing x dollars to piracy.
The use of the phrase "losing" or "loss" implies that they had possession in the first place. Isn't there a better term that they could use? I doubt that there is any way to prove the link between pirate sales and sales loss on the real deal. If an industry claims $3 billion in losses due to piracy, it would be logical to assume that if piracy were to go away, that the profits would instantly go up by that amount...I seriously doubt that would be the case.
If pirates had to pay full price for something, rather than get it for free on the internet, would they? I think we all know the answer to that question. Free is part of the appeal...god knows the shit that Hollywood puts out is rarely compelling enough at it's current price point.
Maybe if it had said "Score 5, Funny", you would have taken it a little less seriously? Geesh...
I didn't hate DIVX because it let you "rent" discs and throw them away. I hated it because it was potentially affecting the library of movies available on regular DVD. When DIVX came out, DVD was just starting to become popular. It really had the potential to totally make or break the success of DVD as a format.
Disney, for instance, was one company planning DIVX-exclusive releases. Even if you bought the "DIVX-gold" releases, which theoretically you could play forever, they still had the right to revoke your ability to view that disc at any time.
I don't want studios to have that much control over something after I buy it. This is the same reason why DRM is evil and should not be supported in any way. DVD's region coding and copy protection are nothing when compared to the evils of DRM. Period. EOF.
Camera jammers could be very dangerous in the hands of, say, law enforcement. For example, what if the Rodney King Beaters were able to fire up their camera jammer before they worked him over? Or Daley turned it on before his goons went hog wild on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago?
You can't do that now because the film is on a big canister that needs light shone through it... but if it's just bits on a HD, the bits can be intercepted, or even copied when the movie isn't being played.
This DivX company seems doomed to failure. Now they're trying to introduce something akin to stopping people from copying CDs onto audio tapes. Sure, it might work, but those who want a copy of a CD now just rip it...
And, seems that the industry's biggest problem now is untrustable DVD screeners, honestly.
If you're about to say that there aren't HDs big enough to store a full digital projection movie, well, my HD used to get pretty full ripping an audio CD, too...
Rip the digital stream, bring it home, reencode. If it's at all possible, it'll be done. It's essentially an early copy of the DVD playing on a really nice projector. Capturing that video through a camcorder won't be necessary for much longer.
sheephead
7d9e63e9501751ff4bf9307989d5623d *SheepHead
This is from the Company's website about its management team:
"Members of the management team previously formed the senior development and operating team for the Divx(TM) encrypted DVD system. Divx(TM), a consumer set-top appliance featuring world-class security and audit technologies, was sold into over 200,000 households. The team worked extensively with five of the major film studios, encrypting over 700 movies. In seven years of development, deployment and operation, the Divx(TM) system was never once compromised."
I guess these guys are looking to make a come back once again.
Beleive it - in Utah, where its painfully normal for early 20 somethings to have babies, they always bring them to theaters.
It might surprize you, but nature actually says that women are most capable of having babies in their 20s (i.e. the probabiliy of unpleasantry starts going up dramatically later than that). Of course there are those jealous and/or self-righteous people who feel the need to belittle anyone who does something that they themselves don't do.
To paraphrase Chris Rock: you can either get your kid on, or your movie on, but not both. If you decide to spit out a kid at the age of 22, you pretty much give up your ability to do anything but sit and look at the walls for the next 6 years.
Yeah, because anyone who has a child of course is sitting looking at a wall for 6 years, missing out on all the great movies (well...at least for 4 months or so until it's on DVD, which is the route which many people without babies follow...and presuming that their area is backwards and doesn't have special movie showings for parents). It's not like they're having an experience that almost all of them will forever describe as the best time of their life. Oh wait, yes it is.
Camcorders are sensitive to IR that our eyes are not. Why not just project a nice 60's style spinning swirl pattern in IR? You could build this out of garage sale junk for about $50 and it would make any videotaped version of a movie pretty much unwatchable, and not be visible to humans.
As a side benefit, it would also allow MIB to root out unregistered space aliens; they'd be the ones complaining about the weird patterns on the screen.
I got all excited and everything 'cause I thought someone had invented a way of jamming camcorders by some sort of radio frequency emission.
Would've been great for all those jackasses I see at museums.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
BTW: When I say "roadhouse" I mean restaurant that serves the standard wings/ribs type "roadhouse" fare, and they usually have poor soundproofing.
I disagree. Just in places where silence is expected and needed. There's no reason someone in a restaurant can't take/make a mobile phone call, if they know to keep their voice down to the level of normal conversation. But in a cinema or theatre or library, it's totally unacceptable.
WHY IN THE HELL IS NIST FUNDING THIS? Why wouldn't the production companies themselves fund something like this. What does this have to do with national standards of measurement? What the hell is going on.. this is straight out corporate welfare, I'll bet NIST gets no part of the patent rights whatsoever.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
If everyone is drinking Sprite and wearing Nike shoes 10 years from now, we'll know I was right.
- soupmaster
I really wish the moderator would have read the story before s/he went around dispensing moderations.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
When it's still 80-something outside, showing up at the theater in a trenchcoat looks suspicious. That assumes, of course, that you can get inside without roasting first.
It's all too easy to bring your own munchies to the drive-in, though...
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
It says this is for digital projectors? I thought most theatres were 70mm (or 35mm) analog?
Am I missing something?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
What, you don't smuggle food in under your coat?
Obviously you missed this part: I live in southern california
A coat would be a tip-off, even in the dead of winter. In the summer, it would probably get him arrested as a terrorist.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
heh I read trough your post and though you had went to watch a *porn* flick in theater and that someone had brought a kid in :)
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999.
Why is it that an article having nothing to do with programming or Linux has to make Linux hackers out to be some horribly criminal deviants?
-N
I've nothing to say here...
How many times have you actually been bothered by someone with a camcorder?
I agree with your point about banning mobile phones, but the whole point of this system is not about stopping people being 'bothered' by a camcorder, its about film companies/cinemas using this technology to protect their investment.
I never apologise, I'm sorry but that's just the way I am - Homer
"Your anti copy procedure is causing me a headache"
'sides, people who download a movie prolly cant afford to go anyway.. I know i cant at current STUPID prices.. i just wait for the rental and copy it then...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am absolutely against anything like that. What would happen if the police were aboe to jam camcorders? How would the Rodny King tapes have been taken? Here is the deal, "Anything" that limits us from developing our abilities in mind or body is a function of a repressive society. It is always wrong to steal just it is always wrong for someone to limit what I should be able to do based on the criminality of others. The object is to catch, or reeducate criminals. The results of those goals should not hamper my mind.
Has any studio actually put the $3Billion in "piracy losses" into their annual statement?
If not, they should shut the fuck up, or prove the statement.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
There is an even easier way of handle that.
On-call, don't go to the cinema. If nothing else
because getting paged in the middle of the filml and having to interrupt and see what's up is such an nicredible pain anyhow.
And if you're about to say "what about those who are always on call?", all I can reply is "get another job".
Just because a law exists on a subject does not mean that law is right, just, fair, etc. In fact, a large portion of laws on the books are wrong, lacking justice, and all fairness.
Its like the French and the Maginot line... built this whole protective barrier against the Germans. So what did the Germans do? They went around it.
you think that's bad?
I was an usher in a movie once, and found used, THAT'S RIGHT USED diapers on the floor. Apparently the mother didn't wanna miss the movie, so she changed the baby right in the theatre. Throwing the used diaper AND the baby wipes on the floor. I came along, unsuspecting, without gloves, and "discovered it".
- Money lost due to people not seeing the movie because they have a cheap-ass camcorder copy of it on their computer that they spent days downloading: $7.50
- Money lost due to piracy in other forms (direct copy, etc): $2,999,999,992.50
I'm so glad people are spending money on this research.Al Qaeda has ninjas!
And those that download it off of kazaa pay nothing. However, they may have gone to see the show otherwise. I watched a rip of Austin Powers 3 on DivX. The movie was a horrible disappointment, so I'm glad I didn't pay $8 to see it in theatre. That's their loss.
Meanwhilst, I've downloaded a few movies that I absolutely loved, and ended up buying the DVD's.
So really, I suppose in one way they lose out, and one way they win. If all that proliferated were the so-called "ShakyCam" copies then it probably wouldn't be so bad. Were I even less honest than already stated I could have downloaded the DivX DVD-Rip of said movies and saved $20, but for me it's worth it to buy the DVD.
Often it's not really a case of cannot afford, so much as a "paying for shit." If less shit (especially in the form of bad sequels) were brought out, maybe people would be more willing to pay for worthwhile movies. I think the last movie I saw in the theatre was Spider-man. It was worth every penny, and I wouldn't think about getting the DivX for that (DVD for me).
If quality is cheap then people will be too, decent movies would probably sell more DVD's - phorm
A year?? I doubt that one... if there are more people like my friend Jared, and I know there are, someone won't sleep until they think of a new way to get ahold of theater movies...
You're nothing; like me.
It's illegal. This company figured a way to stop it.
... what, exactly? More mindless Hollywood tripe that is selling like crazy already, despite the avialability of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in divx format?
Yeah, its innovations like this that make the world safe for
I wonder how many Rodney King's are going to be caught being victimized on tape now, once the LAPD installs those buggers in their squad cars. Or how many bank and convinience store robberies are going to go unmonitored, once Joe Thug can go out and buy (or steal) a cheap video camera jamming device.
Not that you can ever put Pandora's box back together again (to mix my metaphores), but spending the kind of money on this sort of research the way the entertainment industry is doing is anything but a positive contribution to the net human condition.
Not that cartel thugs like that will ever know or feel shame, as their past actions and words already attest.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Perhaps stand up and disturb everyone in your row plus the people immediately behind you on your way to the exit?
How is that any different than someone getting up to go to the bathroom? Give me a break. Some people are a bit oversensitive.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
So, to counteract, said camcorder dudes will mod their gear with metal shielding. Da, da. next.
You're right.
And that's the point: why should I care about something that doesn't benefit me? I'd much rather support a cell phone *ban* that benefits me, the movie consumer, than a slow, technological paradigm shift that will (a) raise prices, (b) create new glitches, and (c) be cracked within weeks and will only benefit rich guys like Valenti wearing Italian suits.
Damn, I wasn't even going to post because I was sure someone would have gotten to this first. Apparently not, unless it was moderated into the dirt.
The technology in question works by "modulating the light from the projector" in such a way that it interferes with video cameras "much the same way computer monitors do."
My read is that they're introducing an artificial refresh to movies -- right now, each frame from the movie is put in place, then lit up all at once, then moved out of the way for the next frame. What these bozos want, by my read, is to put each frame in place and then run a horizontal bar of light down the frame, so that in the "real world" only part of the screen is illuminated at any given time.
This would take advantage of the relatively slow refresh rate (sort of) of our eyes, while causing problems for CCD-based stuff, much like computer monitors do (that monitor you're looking at -- it's flashing really quickly).
The thing that sucks here is that it will probably degrade the movie-going experience for *everyone* in the name of anti-piracy. Part of what makes the movie theater experience nice (or at least superior to TV sets) is the way film looks. This will likely degrade that.
Sure, they could try to compensate by upping the frame rate, or scanning each frame two or three times, but the bottom line is: this will change the way movies look. Not dramatically, and Mom and Pop probably either won't notice or will only come away with the subliminal (subluminal?) impression that movies aren't as engrossing as they used to be.
I haven't seen this technology in use, but I've played with film quite a bit, and my expectation is that it will be the equivelent of replacing nice incandescent lights in an office with flourescent lights -- you can still see, noting really *seems* to be flashing, but something is just *not right*.
And that pisses me off, and if my expectation is right, this will likely keep me out of any theater adopting this technology and make me wait for the DVD release, which I will hopefully be able to continue to play on a good DLP or LCD projector, sans refresh.
I suppose the studios won't care, as they'll just get my cash for the DVD rather than through movie tickets, but this could hurt movie theaters as film buffs stay away in droves (and talk down the theater experience to the general populace).
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
This is going to ruin one of my great past times of recent months. I hope some sort of polarized lense or simular filter over the lense will minimize this effect. There must be some sort of photo len filter than can be hacked onto a camera.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Why at 16 you son are just an infant. Sounds to me like you guys caused more problems the the 8 month old.
# Schumann compared the process with distortions that appear in
# videotaped images of computer screens, which may show lines that
# are invisible to the naked eye. Rather than produce accidental
# disturbances, he said, Cinea plans to create specific disturbances
# that it can control.
Great, _deliberate_ flicker. Makes me want to go out and watch
these right now, what about anyone else?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
"Face it, if you're likely to receive a call that is so stupendously important that it couldn't wait until you pick up your messages, then perhaps you shouldn't have gone to the movies in the first place."
Never heard of a doctor on call, have you? Or do you expect him/her to just sit in the hospital 24 hours a day, just in case.
There are exceptions to every rule.
If the ordinary UNCRITICAL lay audience judges that "perfect" digital DLP actually isn't quite as good as 35mm...
The problem, though, is that DLP is "perfect" every time, while 35 mm prints can only be "perfect" once. After the first pass through the projector, you've got scratches and dust and gate weave and so on, and it just gets worse over time.
So a DLP projection of the current generation may not be quite as sharp as a clean 35 mm print made right off the internegative. But that's not what you see when you go to your local cineplex. Instead, you have to compare DLP to bog-quality, scratched, stretched 35 mm prints that were never that great to begin with due to the number of iterations in the duplication process.
I've seen several movies in a DLP theater, most recently "Signs." I was pretty impressed most of the time, but "Signs" was a little too dark to look good on DLP. DLP can't hold black as well as film, so the movie looked washed out. If they can somehow fix that problem-- I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible-- I think 35 mm theater projection will have lost the fight.
I write in my journal
I wonder if the cops will adopt a similar technology to stop people from videotaping their brutality ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h arrests.
_______
2B1ASK1
UGH. This reminds me of a brainwas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdisplay at Epcot by Motorola where they give you their view of the future of communication, and basically everybody's interconnected instantly by various devices.
The worst part was someone who took a call on their wristwatch-videophone while he was in the middle of bungee-jumping.
I'm sorry, but if I'm in the middle of bungee-jumping, I'm not taking a call.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Maybe if you Linux zealots would figure out a way to make your OS appealing to the masses, those of us who use and enjoy the MS OS wouldn't have to defend ourselves from your rabidness.
Great. Macrovision for the movie theaters. Why would anyone want to _buy_ a movie taken with a camcorder in the audience? The video and audio are going to be substandard, and would include crowd noise and physical interferrence, so why not just pony up the measly $8 and see it in the theater which will provide a better experience. The people going for these low quality copies probably are too damn cheap to pay for a ticket anyway, so I'd like to know where the movie industry is getting their $3 billion figure of 'losses'. My guess: out of their ass.
This isn't going to eliminate the source for good copies: movie industry insiders. Someone always has a preview copy for reviewers, crew, etc. and that's what gets duped and then distributed. Sounds like they need to get their internal processes in shape before push DRM crap.
I can't wait for some epileptic kid to have a seizure during a movie and die in the theater because of this crap. I hope their family sues the studios and this company for everything they've got. I'll feel very sorry for the kid and the family, but I'll laugh my ass off at the movie industry.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Radar Tech: Sir. The radar, sir. It appears to be...
...jammed.
(Jam starts running down the screen.)
Radar Tech:
Helmet: Jammed? (takes a taste of the jam) Raspberry. There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry. (pulls down mask) Lone Star!
Wouldn't that make you a copyright circumvention device, and therefore effecitvely make YOU illegal under the DMCA?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
I'm not being pedantic. The reason this matters is because camcorder copies are crap and not worth watching. And this company is claiming that stopping camcorder bootlegs would bring the industry an extra $1.5e9 per year, yeah right.
They should worry about the REAL digital copies, leaked by insiders and mass-produced in the far east. (Well, they ARE worried about those, but this camcorder stuff is a joke).
Like the article says, the problem is insiders working in the theaters who are allowing the movie to be video taped in the first place. If its a hardware solution that is done in the theater, then that means that the people who work in the theaters will be in control and in charge of that hardware security measure from being activated and used. The entire setup would have to be fool-proof to keep the people who work at the theater from allowing the copying, (fool-proof as in, it always activates when a movie is being played, power to the system is completely secured and running on the same circuit as the projector's (to keep them from just going to the circuit breaker and hitting the switch), the emitters will have to be in locations that is it physically impossible to get to to place something in front of them to block the signal (which will be absolutely impossible since they need to be physically located somewhere in the theater and the employee's can easily setup a ladder and block them), the list goed on as well).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I remember in old theater (about 25 years ago) in Los Angeles had two small dimly lit rooms in the back with about 8 or 10 seats in each and a large glass window open to the screen. I wondered about those for a long time until we had my own child and figured those rooms would come in handy for a crying baby. For now, we just go to the one and only drive-in theater I know of in the Los Angeles area.
Flickering might render a camcorder copy unviewable, but it also might render me a huge headache.
>
well, if they haven't figured in the revenue loss from this, they should. The annoyance of cell-phones (though at least this part is much better than a year or so ago, people are getting more considerate), along with the fscking 20 minutes of previews (and commercials between previews even sometimes) are why I almost never go to the theatre anymore and just wait for it to be $2 at the movie rental place (or the dollar theater in the mall, which oddly enough is much better in both respects) :-)
If the pirates get the DVD rip up months before they will let me pay them to rent it, how can they seriously expect that I want to give them money so badly that I'll wait (or go through the less and less pleasant experience that is the theater) just to give them the money? If they'd sell it to me, I'd rent (or better yet, download direct from them!) to avoid dealing with the rips that turn out to be camcorder (which aren't even worth doing anything about, they suck too bad to watch even for free). But when they won't? Well then. Sorry.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Besides, just how much do the producers think the videotaping of a movie off a theater screen will hurt their sales? If it's a movie I want to watch, I'd definitely not be content with watching a inferior-quality camcorder rip. The only occasion I can think of is where such a rip might prevent me from watching the movie is if the movie does not meet up to my expectations. Therefore, only the makers of awfully bad movies have to be afraid of this.
But then... 90% of Hollywood's movies are awfully bad. Okay, I understand now why they are concerned ;)
Yeah. Get another job so as to not piss off the whiney fucks whom you'll see in the theatre at most once a month.
Right.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The only part that was at all interesting was the last few seconds of the tape... in which a brief but clear image of a guy sitting in front of a bunch of monitors and video equipment appeared.
What the hell... was they guy just unaware that he'd turned the camera on himself and left it on the tape? Or was this his way of "signing" his work? To this day it remains a mystery.
yes, I would much prefer that :-). Though I seldom buy the popcorn or the coke.
At least if it was $$->better vs. free->worse experience they'd win one count. Right now it's pretty questionable whether the theater wins either.
Right now, my couch, stereo, 'TV' (actually an old celeron with a old, but nice sun fixed-sync 1024x768 monitor), and nachos beats the hell out of their theater & popcorn in terms of enjoyability.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
What, you don't smuggle food in under your coat?
Maybe he's a grown-up?
It has been discovered that some people that go to movies don't pay. They have friends that work at the theaters that let them in for free, or go see more than one movie after getting their ticket. Some have even gone as far as hiding in the trunks of cars at what few drive-ins remain.
To combat this piracy threat, estimated at 20 million samolians a year, theaters will require all persons entering the theater to have barcodes branded on their foreheads. They will be cross checked against a central database to ensure that they only see the movie they paid for, and that only one person with the unique bar code is in any theater at the same time.
Since every major cinema will have different standards, the FCC will use an auction to allocate the portion of your forehead to be branded. Those sections in the middle region, which are flatter and easier to read, will of course bring the highest dollars.
Privacy advocates are already concerned that the 'movie police' will now be able to tell what movies each and every person in the world have seen, and began lobbying for legislation prohibiting this practice. But since it was released that Ralph Nader often visits www.goatse.com, all lobbying efforts have mysteriously ceased.
In other news, following recent examples of airport security checks, movie theaters are installing food detectors at all entrances to ensure no dangerous food items are brought into the facility. The theaters will provide certified safe foods at concession areas for those that wish to eat or drink during a movie.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
"...Divx was a great concept that didn't get market support...."
err DUH how clueless can you get, no market support implies it was NOT a great product because NO ONE wanted it. The only people behind DIVX were the movie companies that stood to gain bazillions by controlling your every viewing choice. The so-called market, or the paying customers HATED the crap and refused to buy it. Must be nice to be the center of the universe...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Hell, you could be talking about a crappy 22kbps MPEG encoding of an audio track, and convince the press that this "digital" material was somehow of higher quality than a good analog master.
I'm sure the press did the same hype-job with electricity and nuclear power, to name a few miracle technologies...
"and the person behind me who keeps kicking my seat"
sorry, that was me. won't happen again.
Where are those screeners coming from? Well, the film industry of course!!!!!
yeah, except that a "telesync" refers to a camcorder shot for the video, with audio coming from a direct line in. My guess is that if someone has access to a direct line in for the audio, they also have access to the "off" switch on that jamming device.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999.... This is why my ISP said "Linux is just a hcking tool anyways.." when I needed the gateway server IP... No respect for the ligitimate uses...
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
They've already planned to do this. I remember quite a while back when there was an article on slashdot about this... (don't have time for a link, gotta get to class) there's some tower like device that can disable cellphones in a range of a whole block or less... theaters were supposed to begin installing them last year I believe... maybe it didn't catch on quite as quick as they thought?
You're nothing; like me.
This will never work. FCC approval will be needed and they'll never get it.
Technology to block cellphones have been around for years, but it would be illegal to use it in a theatre (or any other public place).
I can't wait until (through legislation or broad agreement) all portable electronics manufacturers install bluetooth chips in their products. Then all the theatre needs is a bluetooth transmitter that sends a "be quiet" signal. Of course this could be expanded and a "do not record" signal could be broadcase as well. But either way (this Cinea tech or bluetooth), people with camcorders will find a way around it (think Faraday cage).
I learned back in my teens that camcorders' photosensors display remote control patterns as bright white light. I don't know, but I imagine that this is still true for modern cameras, to a degree. To do otherwise would be to ultra-refine photosensors to only capture visible wavelength, for no legitimate purpose. How difficult would it be to set up UV "floodlights" on the edges and corners of a movie theater's screen? Like remote controls, it's beyond the range of human sight, and that would sure fsck up any recorded image.
:)
Oh yeah, and I hereby claim first thought on this subject 10/11/02 at 13:56 EST.
Founded by the same world class engineering team behind the highly regarded Divx(TM) encrypted DVD system
Yeah. I'd really be bragging about that.
-twb
Some guy up in the back row with a camcorder doesn't bother me in the slightest.
<rant>Oh no, what bothers me is this: Picture a big chase scene, lots of kick-ass explosions, sound's way up, you're getting blown out of your seat by the bass, fscking amazing. Hero escapes, fade to silence... and some bastard decides that now would be a good time to dive into that monster sodding crisp packet and make as much noise as humanly possible! They couldn't have done it during the explosions, ohhhhhno, they have to wait till everyone can hear them. Really sets my teeth on edge, makes me think of administering a post-natal abortion right then and there. (There isn't enough violence in the cinema these days.)
These sound systems cost thousands, when it's quiet it's meant to be fscking quiet!!!
Why cinemas insist on selling noisy food in the noisiest containers possible is beyond me.
In short, don't hassle the guy with the camcorder, slap the cinema management around the head and enforce a mandatory euthanasia policy on anyone with a big bag of crisps!</rant>
Moderator clue: it's humour. :P
That is part of the beauty of this. It is anti-noncorporate ownership of cinemas. It marginalizes businesses that are not big players, and creates more entry points and market control for the big players.
I know this is the exception to the rule but:
I have a 17 month old child. My wife and I have brought him to about 20 movies since he was born. This includes ATATC, LOTR, Spiderman, ect.
For those of you who have an infant child and want to bring he/she to the movie, try some of the following:
- Your kid naps. Usually like clockwork. Time your movie for when the kid is about to fall asleep. We would keep our child from napping until we actually got to the movie. This usually can get you through about half of the movie with a sleeping child.
- Breast feed/bottle. Have these ready to go when the child wakes up.
- Biter cookies (Gerber). These are intended for teething infants/todlers. These cookies are hard and if your child has yet to have much of any teeth, one cookie will keep the kid busy for a good 15 to 20 minutes. We'd bring at least 4 to 5 of them. Overkill is necessary as they get dropped on the floor.
Out of 20 or so movies, we have had to remove the baby from the theater twice. Once was because we didn't follow our own rules (family corraled us to go against our better judgement) and the other time, his teeth hurt so bad, that nothing (short term) would keep him from crying. We've learned since then that having our child pre-party with a bit of kiddie ibuprofren with a bit of ambesol if needed works wonders.
Yes, I know that those two movies that we attended with a cranky baby, likely caused a few frowns, but as we care about our own movie experiences, we were extrememly quick to remove him from the theater once he wouldn't settle down. We'd never think of staying in there with him crying.
We are getting to the point now where he usually walks where he pleases and if the movie doesn't keep him attentive, he wont want to keep in one place. We don't go as often at this point (and very rarely with him).
But maybe he could hold the video camera. That might keep him busy. After all, he can minimally use the Replay TV to start *shudder* Barney, Sesame Street, ect. 17 months old. I can barely believe it myself.
Yeah, because anyone who has a child of course is sitting looking at a wall for 6 years, missing out on all the great movies (well...at least for 4 months or so until it's on DVD, which is the route which many people without babies follow...and presuming that their area is backwards and doesn't have special movie showings [cinebabies.com] for parents). It's not like they're having an experience that almost all of them will forever describe as the best time of their life. Oh wait, yes it is.
I have three small children. My wife and I see movies all the time. The secret is called a sitter.
Jesus christ are /. types that far removed from the real world? Sure, it costs you $50 every time you want to take 4-5 hours off without the kids, but that's part of what being a parent is about -- spending time with your kids.
I remember this... Divx gold was an abomination. Say your daughter bought a Disney Divx-Gold (Disney was going to go exclusively Divx), and took it to a friend's house. When it was watched over there, a $3 charge would appear on that person's bill, since _their_ player hadn't already paid for it. A real sleazy way to make money off little children - real nice, Eisner.
The original idea had promise (Aside from all the ecological fun with millions of thrown-away disks). Trust greedy bastards to get greedier and totally screw themselves over. Divx: designed by Circuit City and a Law Firm. Does that tell you why it was avoided?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Of course, the price of jamming would probably be a lot less than lining the whole theater with copper (Copper, IIRC, is very expensive). However, jamming would probably seep ouside the thatre, creating a "no-mobile" zone.
Better to just politely escort the guy with the loud phone out of the theatre.
Better yet, escort anyone creating disturbances outside (loud babies, loud phone owners, etc)
"I love the smell of burning Karma in the morning." Codito Ergo Sum.
Call me paranoid but how long before camcorder jamming devices are installed on COPS to avoid Rodney King type scandals ?
Yeah, but with this new technology, wouldn't it make it difficult for people with medical conditions to watch this type of movie? all the flashing refresh rates on the screen? oh my..
I think I am having a seizure.
When I was a much younger man, I had to write a short story for, I want to say, junior high school. It wasn't much, but I was very proud of it so I had my dad give it a read. Well he got to the last page and was reading the tragic ending when he started laughing. It seemed I'd written that the lead female character was "balling and balling".
"Son," he said, "The word you want is B-A-W-L-I-N-G. Balling is something else entirely." Then he winked at me and I turned a lovely shade of pink.
Ah, the memories.
While they're at it we should jam those ads before the movie. I hate paying $9 to be visually spammed every chance they get.
I see a disabilities suit in the making...
--grummerX
Yeah, this would be great. That way my sister who's doing her residency wouldn't be able to go to movies three out of four weeks a month for which she's on call. It's hard enough for her to have a nice social life as is. Unless doctors could get an exception to the jamming, it would be a bad implementation.
Why don't they just bathe the auditorium with infrared light. The digital cam-corders and video-tape cam corders are sensitive to the IR light . It wouldn't stop good old film cameras, but I don't think they are as easy or cost effective to pirate with.
You heard it here first. Anyone want to patent this idea so?
Ciao!
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
Dear Slashdot,
How can I make a video camera which behaves more like the human eye? Or how can I process video images to emulate human persistence of vision?
no it means you have to wait until the DVD rips come out, which often takes less than a year. You'll have to wait a bit longer than a year for the movies released about the 9-12 month mark, though.
Not to sound over sensationalistic, but this is probably going to turn out to be a VERY BAD idea. Yes, industries always try to sell their devices under the guises of legitimate uses, (please, let us install video cameras EVERYWHERE in London's downtown....for the children...), however, we all know this will be used for no good. Wouldn't it be convenient for all cops to sport their own jammer devices, ensuring there is no 'amateur video evidence' of them stepping above the law? Entire crime/riot/demonstration scenes can have their perimeters 'sealed' by these devices. Now when the Italians decide to murder protesters, no one has any more than word of mouth proof that is already summarily ignored. I, for one, am a bit worried.
JamesC
... for a ridiculous fee of just 9.99$, we'll let you camcord you're very own wife/gf/SO near this highly touristic monument*...
And if you make it 14.99$, you may add one of your childs*.
*: this service is provided as is, you may find that your tape has been erased by a gigantic magnet at the exit. Thanks, have a nice day.
--
Arkan
Good arguments, all. I don't condone theft or copyright infringment. That said: Are there any REAL figures on how many of the downloaded films are actually reducing box office (or video/DVD) sales?
.... FUD?
I have trouble imagining that too many people who own a computer and spend hours DL-ing a copy of Star Wars (or whatever) would be content just to watch the crappy DL'd version on his/her SVGA screen. How many of these pirated copies are acting as "previews" for folks who can't wait for the film to play near them? Or as "souvenirs" for people who already saw it once or twice? (Granted - they should go out and buy the DVD/VHS.)
Now if it's a truly crappy movie, then, yeah - the DL'd version is going to be enough to make people keep their money in their pockets.
Dunno. I can see both sides of the argument. The one thing I HAVEN'T seen is anything like hard numbers (or even substatiated estimates) that say "This is why we think we're losing $3 billion because people are downloading movies." So the argument is based on
Any argument that's based on FUD gets demoted in my book.
-jmk
We've already discussed the cellphone jamming option , here, referencing this.
Too bad it's illegal.
On the kid thing: sure, it's rude to the other patrons, but more importantly, the poor kid is bored and ignored. I've seen three movies in the theatre since I became Dad over 5.5 years ago, and two of them were in the past 6 months (Lilo & Stitch, and Jonah(Veggietales RULE!)).
just have a bright varying intensity infrared light shining on the movie screen. people won't see it but video cameras should. (ever pointed a TV remote at a video camera?)
There is no difference between corrupt corporate executives, and Copyright Infringers, morally speaking. You are either morally and ethically correct, or you are not. The sooner people start understanding that there is NO grey area when it comes to morality and ethics, the sooner we can get on to the important business of mankind. Theft, Copyright violations, fraud, murder. whatever. It's ALL wrong.
While I hate it when people's pagers/cells go off in a theater that I would agree at first. However, I know enough people who need to be able to be gotten a hold of (like doctors) for emergencies, and are smart enough to put the thing on vibrate (so it doesn't disturb anyone else).
Maybe a new cell phone system that will accept a 'quit zone' RF maker and turn itself to vibrate? Great for classrooms too...
I've never heard a mobile ring in a movie. Is leaving on ring just a US thing?
> How does a guy get a name like 'Winky?'
;-)
How does one get a name like "Kelso Lundeen"?
Of course, I'm a bastage.
-30-
More likely, look at the caller id so I can call them back at a more convenient time. I'd sooner die than have a phone converstation in the movies.
Or (and you probably didn't think of this) see which one of my servers is down and decide if it's urgent enough for me to leave.
Not that I go very often... fuck Hollywood, bunch of mindless trash anyway.
What are they thinking. If you bring in a strobeoscope you can get the frame rate, and then
modify a device to deal with it.
It seems quite obvious how this must work: Simply mount powerful infared lights are mounted around the screen, and place some in the projection booth aimed at the screen. While humans can't see infared light, camcorders can (press some buttons on a remote control and videotape it). The light will cause the whole movie to be blurry, have a red tint, as well as having an awful glare from the lights around the screen.
:-)
Seems like a pretty low-tech solution to me. Only problem is that it'll probably make all the cats in the theatre go crazy
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Um, maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think the point of camcorder jamming has anything to do with keeping customers happy, it's to stop bootlegging.
Camcorder jamming has a seperate purpose from cell phone jamming. Nobody's trying to pirate movies with their cell phones (yet).
If theatres want to stop bootlegging, jam camcorders. If they want to make my viewing experience more enjoyable, hire a rent-a-thug to punch people in the face if they/their-cell-phones/their-children won't shut the fuck up.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
Remember the article from Wired with the blind guy who was able to see using a video camera tapped into his brain (sorta anyway). What happens to him when his signal gets jammed? He sees a quite messed up looking world.
Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite. You don't need to be reachable immediately at the press of a button all the time.
I do when I'm oncall. Of course, when I'm oncall I don't go to the movies or theatre. I generally don't have a problem with people using a cell phone in a restaurant, as long as they are being no louder than the ambience in the room.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I agree 100%. Cell phones are a nice luxury, and at time can be very helpful when a child has some emergency.
I also agree that a certain amount of manners should be observed also, such as using a silent ring and answering the phone outside of the theater. When I had a cell phone that was common practice, and I would hope that other people get the hint that this is the way to do things.
"I fart in your general direction."
Well, I've read a number of reports from very critical people that inhabit rec.arts.movies.tech , and that group tends on the whole to be anti-digital, pro-film. And some consumer-type columnists (including Roger Ebert). All of these reports were on theatres showing the same film at more or less the same time in film and DLP, and the viewer walked back and forth between houses to compare.
What's remarkable, to my way of thinking, is that without exception ALL observers who have actually seen DLP and compared it to film under real-life conditions have come up with the same judgement: Not much difference. Of course they all go on to slice 'n' dice the differences that exist (on the one hand DLP is steadier, on the other hand DLP has visible pixelation and softness at viewing distances that some like for film, etc. etc.)
But the bottom line: there's not much difference. I have yet to see any eyewitness account in which the reporter said that there was a big difference. No great raves about DLP, no great pans.
I've personally seen DLP only once, and didn't compare it against film. All I can say is, it was a bit steadier and less flickery. But if I hadn't known it was DLP I never would have noticed.
70mm versus 35mm is a "Wow! what a difference" experience. DLP versus 35mm? "What's the difference?"
Now, as for dirty prints: it's all a matter of degree, and I have to say that the local multiplexes in the Boston area AIN'T that bad. I saw "Lord of the Rings" at the Randolph showcase when it had been showing for three or four weeks, and the print looked absolutely perfect to me. Plenty of dirt and scratches on the previews and "no smoking" stuff, but the feature itself was fine.
I don't think DLP has won by any means. It's perceived that the main cost is to the theatre owners and the main benefit is to the distributors.
Another unknown is the durability and reliability of the DLP gear. I WANTED to see DLP TWICE. I schlepped out to Framingham specifically to see "Fantasia 2000" in DLP, and the projector was down the day I went. How much of that is there? Can the DLP gear be run by people with the same amount of training and professionalism as the people they hire to run the film projectors?
And film projectors last and make money for theatre operators for decades and decades. The spiffy new DLP setup will probably still FUNCTION in five years, but what are the chances that the format of the distribution media won't change and that there won't be a constant "upgrade treadmill" cost?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So she can rent/buy/pay-per-view the movie and watch it later. It's not like the movies are a great social experience or anything (seeing as electronic and human interaction is forwned upon).
Why should she (potentially) ruin everyone else's experience?
Besides, if she going to have a social life, perhaps she should go somewhere where she can actually be social. Right?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I am God.
P.S. - I wish someone would jam me in the ass. I badly need to unplug my rectum. Can anyone help?
That sentence is true even for just the first half. No theater chain is EVER going to pay for digital cinema themselves. It is up to the studios and distributors (who stand to benefit financially from it). All the installations that are out there so far are "freebies" given away by companies trying to jump-start the market.
Free Hans!
I, however, ball. Every chance I get. Sometimes I even ball my head off.
But I don't bawl like a baby. That service costs extra and I'm a wiped out genX slacker...
"Now, a screaming baby jammer, that I can agree with."
Maybe it would be something like this?
i wouldn't mind them jamming mobile phones in cars that are moving, and the person using the phone is the driver.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
So why don't you write the MPAA and complain?
Don't believe me? Check out the ruling in US v. LaMacchia and a related case, Dowling v. US, which is discussed extensively in the LaMacchia ruling. In particular, read Justice Blackmun's analysis on the difference between theft and violation of copyright.
LaMacchia broke the law, no doubt about it. Congress even moved to close the so-called "LaMacchia loophole" some time after this case was decided. But it still doesn't change the fact that the two crimes in question are fundamentally different.
Read the book?
mp3: l33t term for empty.
bawling!! Say it with me. "Bawling!" Aaaarrgggg! Get it right!
("Balling" is a completely different verb...)
You tell the doctors they aren't welcome. Me I prefer treating the people like kings who operate on gunshot victims.
As much as we claim we know the truth is most expensive software is licensed by companies hence the high price, adobe and MS need piracy, if these people could not pirate photoshop and would use something else possibly gimp and it would improve and photoshop might lose sales. MS Office needs piracy with out piracy MS losses the defacto standard and it gives room for others to rise. Besides professional users who can afford this software, especially poor students and these companies need to hook these people before they become professionals. Most professionals do pay for the software, I mean honestly if people paid for this software they rarely used it would cost more than their pc did. Lets be real piracy losses are inflated, people pirate tons of shit but if they had to buy it they definitely would not. I mean if you were to buy software, but decided you would pirate it then that is worse but otherwise it is like free advertisement. Piracy can make or break a movie, or record because of the amount of people who see it some will buy the cd or DVD or go to the theater for the experience of high quality showing. Now perfect copies of in the theater movies would hurt the industry. Honesty the thiefs are just stealing from the crooks, not that that is right but are these media companies any better. Honestly this fear of piracy is crazy spend minimal money protecting yourself from pirates in obvious ways and get back to doing what you do, I do not care what DRM crap you are doing building better products with those funds are what will make you more money.
Some Japanese invented a wooden coating material they claim absorbs electromagnetic signals: a blessing for, say, an Opera house or a simple movie theater.
I read it here, it's in Spanish but probably you can find an English translation somewhere else...
OK, let's be nice to the huge English-speaking audience and do the search myself... here it explains it works by embedding magnetic particles in wooden panels. A really bright idea!
Um, and if you are a doctor on call, why can't you wait until tomorrow to go to the movies?
It wasn't fscking announced, it was said that they will start researching it, using interference.
The idiots who submit stories like this must be told just how shite they are by Editors with a clue.
I wish Kuroshin wasn't shit.
I wish Kuroshin wasn't shit.
I wish Kuroshin wasn't shit.
A great use for this would be to jam all the hidden cams in dressing rooms, bathrooms and locker rooms. I was considering building a pocket size jammer for my wife to use when using public bathrooms or trying on clothes a few years ago.
42
Yeah, I'm sure the vibration of my phone ringing is a real nuisance to you.
Not really, just when you answer.
The only thing more annoying than a ringing phone in a theatre, is the dumbass who answers.
But I agree about the children. I mean, get a babysitter for fuck's sake. If you can't, skip the movie until you can, grow some balls, take responsibility for your actions, we didn't tell you to have a kid, so why should we be annoyed by it?
Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite.
Empathy (a prerequisite to politeness) is one of the few abilities that distinguishes (arguably) a select few species on this earth. You're assuming that most humans possess this ability and are proficient enough at it to apply it.
My anecdotal research shows differently.
I'm currently debating whether or not to encourage the ability in my (yet to be born) children. While it is a noble and admirable quality, because it is so rare, it is rarely rewarding (i.e., due to the "it takes one to know one" effect, so few people recognize empathy when they see it, much less acknowledge it, that it yeilds more frustration than anything else).
Does this qualify me as a cynic?
moto411.com
I disable sigs...do you?
I guarantee the side effect of this "undetectible to the human eye" copy-protection is going to be the same as staring at a monitor with a refresh rate of about 60 mHz for 3 hours. I guess they will also improve their revenues by selling Ibuprofin at the snack counter?
--something witty
And of course as more and more cinema owners are forced out of business or lose revenue by being forced to purchase and install anti-piracy devices in the their theatres there will be more cause to pirate in the first place, either by the public wanting more variety or the owners trying to generate some moola from our little malaysian friends.
Balling and balling, eh? Sounds like this kid has life wired! :) I'd have felt sorry for him if he'd been bawling, but apparently no need.
.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I've seen this issue come up so many times on Slashdot and I can't figure out why the hell you USians want to jam phones so badly in cinemas and stuff - or are there really that many inconsiderate people in your country who let their phones ring?
I remember this came up a bit in Australia a while back, but it's illegal to jam private spectrum. However, after those reminder notices at the start of each movie the problem went away almost completely. Now we don't even get the reminder notices because people do the right thing. I go to a lot of movies and only remember a phone ringing once in the past year. The person was so embarassed that it's unlikely they will let it happen again.
And I don't know about US technology, but if people can't take a call they discreetly send an SMS, or reject the call. No big deal.
--quirky
look you fewls, you cant record a 3d movie right? it will look like pure CRAP on a cam, and the cam wont get the colors well enough to allow you to watch it at home with 3d glasses.
CASE SOLVED, I PATENT THIS ANTI-PIRACY TECHNOLOGY NOW! ITS MINE! i want more 3d movies, as long as you dont put in crap things in your face to scare people.
-compn
Macrovision doesn't necessarily affect the timing of the signal; it works by inserting garbage (such as high or alternating voltages) in the vertical blank interval of each frame (that is, the part of the frame that occurs "between" beyond the bottom and top of the screen). This affects the automatic gain control of most VCRs, causing jitter, buzz, annoying variations in brightness, loss of sync, and other artifacts. Similar techniques are used (possibly a subset of Macrovision) to insert a signal that interferes with the VCR's speed setting upon playback. The extraneous signal bleeds over to the portion of the tape that tells the VCR whether to play at SP/LP/SLP speed, causing the tape to run at the wrong speed and/or alternate speeds during playback. (Try recording some DVDs from a Playstation2, and you may see this behaviour upon playing back the tape. Fortunately, my VCR--a Toshiba/M648 picked up cheaply at a garage sale--seems immune to all known copy protections.)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
"Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite. You don't need to be reachable immediately at the press of a button all the time."
Wouldn't that imply that such people are simply butlers/servants for the calling fucker?
People answer their phone like monkeys, but yet when their wife call 'em, it's like they never heard. Weird.
this is a bit of a long shot, but what the hey.
If the film companies claims lose £Xm revenue because of people 'stealing' their films using camcorders, then this preventative measuse will mean the money they would have lost can go toward providing a better experience for you, the cinema goer, either by lowering prices or by investing more money to make better films. I appreciate there are costs involved in setting this thing up initially, but still, this only has to be done once.
I know, the chances are slim of such things, but still possible!
I never apologise, I'm sorry but that's just the way I am - Homer
This topic has nothing to do with jamming. Jamming is disruption of communication by forcing interference in the channel from the outside. This is simply copy protection. (Which isn't as exciting as 'jamming camcorders'?)
Anyway, a few years later my younger brother was born. He cried all the time, never slept, and was totally inconsolable. Suddenly, my parents realized that they weren't actually so smart after all, they had just been lucky that I wasn't a crier.
So, my point is, what works for one family may not work for others, take any "helpful advice" from a parent who has only had one kid with a grain of salt. Some babies are just too loud to take to the movies. My parents used to go to drive-in movies when they had babies, which strikes me as remarkably clever, it's too bad drive-ins don't exist anymore. I suppose the home theater experience is better these days than the drive-ins anyway, even if it does mean waiting a couple months after the movie is released to watch it.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
How tight does the mesh have to be?
(just for a ballpark idea)
I'm against IP property on the grounds that it's knowladge and the person who can say who knows what rules the world.
But untill the laws are changed people are making a living creating this knowladge and have as much right to be compinsated for the work they do as anyone producing a product.
Theft of movies (in it's raw form it's knowlage but it's not more than entertainment.. the candy of brain food and of no importence the tyrany mentioned before dose not exsist here)
The same runs in RL theft.
Person steals a service and justifys it as being 'non-tagable' but real work was done.
Person steals an item "you have to many" (kid actually said this to a merchant once)
It's ok everone else is bad but MY theft is ok.
I think selling knowladge is evil but thats not jusifying theft any better than the justification for food theft.
I don't actually exist.
i wonder if this technology could be adapted to make a device that prevents digital cameras / dv cams from making out youtr details. I mean if the army is going to go around videotaping civillians at protests then protesters need a way to fight that. something along the lines of a scramble suit but lowertech.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
The Dr. is welcome, the interruptions are not.
If you own the theater, go ahead and have a place where people can turn in their phones, pagers, etc. and add a staff member to go get the person when a communication come is for them.
Problem solved.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
You end up with a Britney album.
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the ... A fifth
molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose
existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation
theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about
the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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