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Movie Distribution Via Satellite
mnewton32 writes "An article in the Vancouver Sun briefly detailed the first satellite-based distribution of a major Hollywood movie. It will be shown on 115 screens at AMC theaters in 27 markets. How long before we can download it on eMule?"
"IANA satellite engineer, but apart from any encryption, would there be anything stopping someone with a reciever and the right gear grabbing, ripping and sharing this?"
Oops. Well, yeah, that's a good point. Unless they somehow focus the transmission at the particular theater that could be done. A.) they'd need a dish capable of recieving the data. I'm guessing that wouldn't be hard to build. B.) They'd need to know where to point it. C.) They'd need to know what to tune in on. and D.) They'd need some way of decoding the transmission.
Err not trying to state the obvious here, but I'm just chewing on what you said. If it were the military, I'd say fat chance. But these guys are probably using off-the-shelf, so to speak, services. I doubt they launched their own satellite or wrote their own protocols etc. If I'm even partially right, then it's possible that some smart guy out there could catch the data and do something with it.
I'd love to hear from somebody that can shed some light on this. I know virtually nothing about satellite technology.
"Derp de derp."
"Or someone on the inside could get it *BEFORE* it's sent out over the link - and before any watermarks or DRM are put in."
Well, to be fair, that possibility exists in a broader proportion right now. Movies these days are edited digitally. I'm oversimplifying quite a bit here, but somebody at the movie studio could wander in, hit 'Export to AVI', and drum their fingers for a while. I can't say I've ever heard of that happening. (err.. well that rang a bell... wasn't somebody at ILM busted for something like that? Help?) It's not clear to me, and maybe I'm just naieve, that incidents like that would rise noticably in the event of satellite distribution.
"Derp de derp."
Movies are already half digital. The X and Y of the pictures are analog. But the Z (time, made up of frames) is digital. Always has been. Most theaters now encode sound digitally too.
In contrast, normal TV is half digital and half analog, but in a different way. Analog X, digital Y (discrete lines), digital Z (discrete frames) and analog sound.
And sometimes technology advances from digital solutions to analog solutions. Look at rotary telephones (digital) which lost out to DTMF (analog).
Weird huh?
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