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Spielberg Bitten by DVD Encryption
diodesign writes "The Guardian newspaper has reported that 5000 DVD based preview copies of Spielberg's 'Munich' sent to reviewers in the UK can't be played due to the copy protection system involved. Human error at the laboratory where the DVDs were encrypted lead to the wrong region code being set, plus the reviewers use special players from Dolby that prevent the pirating of 'screeners'. An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers."
go over to the lab and club them with his oscar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
it was region encoded wrong, Munich is in Germany, not in the UK.
At least it wasn't Jaws.
Prove it.
One reviewer commented that they don't have the time to review and consider every candidate movie anyway. When he chooses which to look at, the ones that require him to set up a special player separate from his usual equipment, and that does not allow him to screen them on his laptop when traveling, will end up in the bottom of the pile, unscreened.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The post has completely missed the significant point with this story. It's not so much that the dvds were unviewable, it's that because the reviewers couldn't see the film, the film itself is ineligible for the main official UK film awards.
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
It is 100% greed. DVD could be more expensive in Europe than in the US, even with the postage and custom (saying could, because it depends on the country). MPAA members want to be able to sell the same product for different prices depending on region. So, for a western European, buying from the US might be cheaper than buying locally. For a northern American, it could be cheaper to buy from Asia than to buy locally. They really want the public to pay as much as possible for a given product, and not the world average.
Also, they usually get local distributors to sell their DVDs. These would go away, they fear, if everybody buys DVDs from another country.
To be honest, I don't think they should fear the last point. Most people in Norway would prefer to have DVDs with Norwegian subtitles, so they probably wouldn't order from the US anyways (since those DVDs aren't subtitled in Norwegian).
Je ne parle pas francais.
why are they even bothering to region code them?
Because they werent suppose to!The S-View system requires a fully authored standard DVD-Video project as input, with only a few restrictions:
1. Leave 200 MB free space on the disc (on Layer 0 of a dual layer title).
2. Do not enable CSS.
3. Do not set Region code.
4. Do not set parental levels.
5. Author the main feature as one continuous VTS, in MPEG 2.
6. Do not author angles.
7. Add a "Cinea Audio Track" as the last audio track for the title. "Cinea Audio Track" is a placeholder for watermarking data that the Cinea system generates. The content of this track is not important (the facility can use a track supplied by Cinea, or can generate their own). We can provide a Dolby Digital 128 kHz file (containing an audio test tone) 120 minutes in length, which is to be authored as the last audio under the entire feature.
http://www.cinea.com/fews.html
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The reason is pretty simple, though equally it's pretty rubbish.
Movie studios sell the distribution rights for a film to multiple companies, including CD soundtrack producers, toy companies, and DVD distributors, giving each one limited rights in what they can do, including what parts of the world they can sell the finished product.
The DVD distribution company then decides on things like the price they'll sell it to wholesalers at, what extras to include, the packaging design, does all the retail hand-holding, local marketing (if it's a major film the studio will still play a part in all this), and is responsible for the DVD manufacture and shipping out to the wholesalers.
The theory goes that if there wasn't region encoding, the distribution companies wouldn't be willing to pay as much for their monopoly rights to distribute a film in a region, as everyone would buy the version with the extras and packaging they wanted at the cheapest price they could find wherever it came from in the world, rather than pay full retail price in their local country for the version their distributor has decided to produce.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
Hi, I see you're new to the film industry...
It's amazing how often the popular press gets confused by the technical details.
And it's amazing how often Slashdot and its elitist readers do an even worse job. For example, in this case:
1) The bozo who submitted the article was the one who got the technical details confused. If you RTFA, they actually get it correct.
2) The Slashdot editors, not caring about accuracy, posted a summary which they saw as a button pusher and traffic gem. $$ trumps facts
3) You, the typical Slashdot reader, didn't read the RTFA, and posted a general rant about stupidity and included the mandatory karma whoring Wikipedia link
4) The mods, following the chain, gave your nice little culmination of ignorance a Score:5, Insightful
So to summarize, the press got the story and technology straight. It wasn't until it made it to Slashdot that the story was misunderstood and politicised at every level.
Interesting, ain't it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
The submitter and I have very different criteria for "ironic twist". A Cask of Amontillado this is not. Hell, it isn't even up to M. Night Shyamalan standards.
Seriously, every time I reread the submission I find something else wrong. This has nothing to do with encryption, consumers, or copy protection. Region codes serve only one "useful" purpose: preventing the import/export of legit discs. The lab mistakenly put in a "1" instead of a "2", so the disc wouldn't play. This is a non-event. This is not a stunning blow against the media pigopolists. No points were made. No wars were won. No minds were blown.
Rename the headline to "Lab fucks up; switches 2s with 1s. Almost nobody affected" or I will start submitting a new article for every DVD-R I coaster.
That, my friends, is quality ownage.
Now, what'd be funny is if they turned to BitTorrent to get it by tomorrow.