Slashdot Mirror
Automatic Scanning for Cameras in Theaters
An anonymous reader writes "A Florida firm claims to have found a solution for the movie industry to prevent bootlegging in theaters. Tom's Hardware carries a story about Trakstar, which demonstrated its 'PirateEye' technology in a Hollywood movie theater to journalists and movie industry representatives: The technology uses light impulses to detect video recording devices. A second component is an audio watermarking system."
Ahh yes, the solution to bootlegging in theatres. How much of a problem is this anyway, though? I've seen copies of movies taken by some guy with a camcorder... the audio quality is always lousy, people chatter in the background, and there is invariably some big guy who takes a popcorn break right in the middle of the movie. We won't get into the video aspect, which is dog awful. Sounds like someone solving a non-problem, as usual.
The real issue are those screeners, which they've made some progress with (I hear), and the people who work in the theatres, which will be difficult. I doubt someone getting paid close to minimum wage is going to care about your IP. Watermarking sounds promising.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
i thinx cameras are the lest of the movie industry's worry . try patching up the holes were the screeners are comming from first.
.. is a brute-force attack against CCD's and other camera optics.
Some sort of electronic/optical flash system that, when activated, overblows CCD's, or otherwise interferes with their operation.
Then I could sell it to guys like this and make a fortune...
(And before you liberties people get started, I believe I have a right to not get my picture taken, when I want not to get my picture taken..)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
They move mass DVD fabrication into the US where they can really punish people for making a second run to sell on street corners for a couple bucks? Seriously, the brown dots are pretty fucking gay. They are QUITE conspicuous, and with movie prices being what they are, someone like me really needs to take a look at exactly what is to be gained from seeing a movie a week (for about 10 years). And now they want to add strobes and tones? Are they trying to get me to pirate movies, so I can have the satisfaction of putting lying painters out of work? Cause if that's they genious plan, they're pretty close to realizing their goal.
Okay, reading the scanty information they provide seems to indicate that it does its trick by bathing the room with IR light.
Somehow the camera is supposed to respond to this. My knee jerk reaction was that all you needed to do was put tape over the remote control sensor and you would be good to go.
But they would undoubtedly have thought to create a system more resistant to spoofing than that. So I am stumped. I assume they are relying on some response from the lens? The feature list says it can't be fooled by pinhole cameras or even filters on the lenses, so thats what I base my guess on.
Anyone with more information care to speak up?
Which i thought was pretty funny. Read
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
...if it detects a video camera in the theaters is stop the film, turn the lights on, and make an announcement that there is a person in the theater who is illegally recording the movie and this is the cause for the delay. The movie will commence once the perpetrator has been identified and leaves the theater. Come to think of it, this system should search for obnoxious kids and cell phones too.
A 40 of hard liquor? Don't you mean malt liquor?
Is the sharing of "handycam" pirated movies really so much of a problem? This smells to me like a smart company marketing a product to an industry that still doesn't seem to "get" what's happening.
I see news stories all the time about these "bandits" being caught in cinemas with recording devices - but anyone I know who downloads movies deletes anything that turns out to have been recorded this way. Instead, the vast, vast majority of the content available on p2p networks are high quality rips from the screener DVD produced to market the film before its release.
Most of the time, these versions are not only of far higher quality but are available online days or even weeks before the film is even in theaters.
If the cinemas really want to "solve" this problem, maybe they should lean on their distributors a little to change their obscene pricing so the tickets don't need to cost so much and the establishments don't need to inflate refreshments so ludicrously to maintain profitability.
A quick visit to suprnova.org lists many screeners and much better digital quality movies that arent handheld captured from a theater. They should look in their own backyard and find out who leaks these movies instead of concentrate on shitty quality handhelds.
One way (almost the only way) it can work (to my naive mind) is if it's looking for a spectral component assoc. with CCD litho or possibly p/n junctions or .x mm-sized diffractive features. IOW, it's looking for an optical characteristic specific to a chip. Big tautology, but i'm a simple mind...
This suggests that if we were to deploy a handful of EEPROM-typ chips (the UV-erasable things with the little windows) around the theater, we could probably spoof the system with false positives.
it's a thought.
Screeners suck anyway. I'd love it if someone introduced a technology to keep them to a minimum. The REALLY cool thing about this technology is that you'll be able to use it to know if there is a hidden camera somewhere. Screw the theater. Wait til you can use this technology to find hidden camera's anywhere.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
The market has to adjust to the viewing habits; it appears people may want to watch new movies using alternative methods (aka internet). Don't most movies nowadays make more money from DVD sales then the actual movie? I wonder if the movies were released simultaneously to theaters, DVD, video on demand, video of Internet, etc if this would be an issue?
I'll keep my response limited to legal methods of viewing a movie.
IMO, there are only 2 reasons to go to a theater in the first place. The first reason is because the new movies are there and you don't have a choice if you want to see them while they're still hot. The second reason is the "big-screen experience". The bigger draw for me is the first reason. Either I want to see the movie beforehand or enough people talk about it that I want to see it without waiting for video. I don't usually see movies just for the effects, but on the rare occasion that I do, I'll usually wait for it to come to the local $3 theater. When I've gone to see special-effects movies in the past, it's usually been with a group of friends and we've gotten bad seats right up front, where I can see the pixels from the digital projectors. Between that and the price, I'm beginning to dislike theaters very much, regardless of whether or not they're "just breaking even."
About 5 years ago I was on a trip and went to a theater near Cincinnatti; the prices were cheap, the seats were incredibly comfortable, they had top-of-the-line sound and video, and it was very clean. I don't remember what the name of the place was, but ever since then I've used it as a benchmark and nothing within a 2 hour drive of home even comes close. At my local theater, I pay nearly $10 for unfriendly service in a dirty mall theater with bad acoustics and literal commercials before the previews. It's not pleasant.
Simultaneously releasing the movie on video and theatrically is a great idea for consumers, but a bad idea for your local theater. It'll never happen. By releasing at the theaters only, people pay per person per viewing and only the people who go to theaters for reason #2 would go out any more. Renting a movie at Blockbuster means that many people can amortize the cost ("You rent this time, I'll rent next." Or, "You rent, I'll bring the booze^H^H^H^H^Hsnacks.") and watch it many times if they want; bad news for theaters. I know that if I could rent the latest releases I'd all but stop going out to see movies until they slashed prices or greatly improved their theater.
I have access to a big HDTV and good 5.1 surround. It's 5 minutes to Blockbuster and 20 to the only theater friends ever want to go to. I can have a few drinks at home without worrying about the drive home. By renting a movie I can pause, replay a scene, pick a convenient time 24/7/365, sit in more comfortable seats, bring my own snacks, and I can avoid mall rats, insane drivers and carpools and parking lot dings. If I could rent the latest movies, it would be a no-brainer.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
The camera had the ability to shunt the IR filter to the side and film in near-infrared.
If you put this filter/beamsplitter in front of the lens you could reflect the IR from the anti-pirate system off to the side, much like a stealth plane reflects radar to somewhere other than the detector. A little bit of careful beamsplitter/filter selection and the camera is invisible again, and can still see the screen.
Then they'll start putting detectors all over the theater to catch the light that pirates reflected off to the side, and the pirates will start bouncing the light to the side and into a cavity where it's absorbed, and the detector people will look for the missing energy, and it will go on and on, and as the pirates have to get more sophisticated they'll start being producing even better quality bootlegs, and getting into a movie will be worse than going through airport security, which will make otherwise avid moviegoers want bootlegs even more....
Why don't they just release movies all over at about the same time and save everyone the trouble?
"The impulses are only 20 ms in length. Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms to recognize the light source."
What garbage! By that reasoning, the flash from a camera ought to be invisible.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Two solutions, both of which are problably cheaper. 1) just have several night vision cameras mounted than can watch the audience during the showing. If monotored by the theater security, it would be very easy to stop anyone with any type of camera. 2) I personally dont have a camera, but my webcam is capable of viewing Infra-red light, so they could mountseveral IR flood lights around the thearer, and it would be like trying to record the sun, and blind the rest of the camera. Of course, there would be ways to avoide this, but just an idea.
Things that have focusing optics followed by a flat reflective surface (which includes most cameras) will blink.
Wouldn't that include everyone's eyes? Or is the eyeball not flat enough or something?
Most IR filters work by reflecting the IR light away from the camera, which is how the system detects a camera in the first place as most cameras are sensitive to IR light and require a filter to be usable in normal conditions. There are IR filters that work by absorbing the IR light rather than reflecting it, but they are much more expensive. The increased cost is why most camcorders use reflective IR filters rather than absorbing IR filters.