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Digital Film Distribution System Coming
aniyo~ writes with word of a collaboration of movie studios with distribution companies to come up with a system for rapid digital distribution of movie masters. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners are working on technology that will allow much more responsive film distribution based on local needs. DCIP is wholly owned by the Regal, AMC, and Cinemark theater chains, which among them run 14,000 screens in North America. The new system would be available to those and other interested theater operators. About 2,200 U.S. theater screens currently show digital films, and today these are, by and large, delivered on hard drives.
Does anyone else out there have the problem of sperm getting in the keyboard ? I try to lick it out, but the cracks are too small. Help ?
You go to the movies...
With the advance of digital video being shown at movie theaters, does that mean that piracy of said movies will be better and more frequent?
That is... would the quality be raised, i.e. the actual movie being copied vs. someone recording the screen? It would be a lot easier to borrow one of the HDDs, copy it, and return it rather than coming in w/ a tripod to record it.
Something to think about...
"About 2,200 U.S. theater screens currently show digital films, and today these are, by and large, delivered on hard drives."
Guess they don't have satellites in their universe.
So is Christmas.
I can't wait for beaming movies crossing my front yard. I hope the password is admin.
They're probably going to want to put some protection on those drives to make sure the movies are only show in the theater they were sent to. The theater can share with a friend theater but only on a limited basis. There's some indication that the theaters may be able to share wirelessly at some point but that doesn't really seem to work right now. A theater's right to show the film can be revoked at any time but it doesn't really matter since a major outlet already left the key in the clear.
I'll bet the torrents puts their system to shame.
Let's hope it's a teeny, tiny bit better than the stuff they used on those new hi-def disks the kids are using today.
What?
I have a theater. Granted, it's a home theater, but still -- I want in on this. Maybe now I won't have to wait forever for the DVD to come out, if I don't like driving halfway across town to sit in a noisy, dirty room with 200 of my closest friends.
Yeah, I know. And pigs may fly...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Nothing, but nothing will ever beat the real thing: Three Strip Technicolor.
Sometimes real "stuff" is better than bits and pixels.
but come on....do a little better than that. Theaters are a thing of the past. Tell me why the hell am I going to pay a crap load of money for a shitty experience? A lot of times most movie theaters are run by teenagers who barely have any respect for anyone and can care less about your experience. You pay a lot for a washed out picture with a bunch of people around you that can't turn off their cell phones or they bring their kids in. I can watch a movie on a big screen or my 24" monitor at home or a friends house that has much better picture and I can drink beer. It is all about comfort and quality, and theaters just lack both. Paying $10-15 just for an hour and a half experience is not worth it. MPAA and studios....move on, please. Get in the 21st century. Thanks, bye.
Sending an encrypted file through BitTorrent already does everything they want. Also, BitTorrent is plenty efficient enough, and probably more efficient than what they'll come up with. Classic example of reinventing the triangular wheel.
Then what's this Pirate Bay thingy, then? :]
Not to mention *cough* that other place videos get posted that every savvy internet user knows about, but which everyone else seems to have forgotten...
This is a lot of been there, done that. Access Integrated Technologies (ticker symbol AIXD) already does that via satellite. Its implemented in the 2,200 theatres mentioned in the article and has a significant first mover and infrastructure advantages. Its taken them a lot of losses to get there but I think their biggest hurdles have been overcome. - Ayal Rosenthal
Social liberal, fiscal conservative, always sarcastic.
Eventually we will be able to watch any movie or anything instantly "on demand". When we reach that time would there be any reason to own movies or TV shows etc on DVD or Blu-Ray or whatever?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I thought movies were delivered to theaters digitally by satellite already.
BitTorrent ;)
if the distribution companies lower their rates to theaters, it could conceivably make it possible for theaters to offer more movies without raising their operating costs.
Now, on the face of things that sounds like a good idea, however when analyzed with a critical thought process it gets much worse than you think.
First, movie theaters are losing business for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many new releases pretty much suck. Add to that the myriad of financial pressures on the public at large and they have a problem that they would like to blame on someone else. That someone else is primarily pirates or illegal downloaders. Once they digitize the movies and transport them over networks they will have a ready made excuse for stock holders: Those downloading pirates are ruining our business.
This is basically the same thing as if they were to get distribution costs that are 1/10th the current costs. It won't make movies any better and will barely give them something to compete with the DVD rental market. Either way, they won't be making tons more money and if they do, it won't be passed on to the consumers. This is just cost cutting to improve their bottom lines in the face of the light at the end of the tunnel.
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"Beaming an encrypted version of a digital film directly to the theater should also cut down on film piracy and bootlegging, Antonellis said, by eliminating the number of opportunities for people to get their hands on the movie as it is transit."
I find this line humourous. In one sentance they simultaneously assume that their encryption will not be broken or circumvented while at the same time blaming piracy on the mailman!
I whole-heartedly hope this system is implemented and suceeds since it offers obvious benefits to the consumer. However, I also hope the MPAA has realistic expections and doesn't play the scapegoat game when their own employees leak keys so that pirates can decrypt the satellite feeds and distribute the results. People with Camcorders in Montreal... Now the mailman! Who are they going to blame for this one? NASA?
While it's fine and dandy that the film industry is making use of modern technology, I'm wondering if any "bold" filmmaker will ever part from the 24 fps standard.
I can only wonder what a 60 fps film would look like, but I do know that I've had my fill of backwards spinning wagon wheels and nausea inducing camera pans.
A friend of mine is a manager / projectionist at a cinema and I was discussing this kind of thing with her last week.
Digital distribution (through teh intarweb / closed network, not hard drives you chumps..) would make her life much, much easier, make it easier to fill more sessions with less cost and generally make life rather rosy for cinema workers and projectionists everywhere.
It's a Good Thing(tm).
..... sorry, had an afterthought.
This distribution method is awesome, but of course it doesn't solve the problem of poor content. Not yet anyway.
If distribution gets so cheap and easy to do, there's real potential for indy film makers to get their work seen. Dupe their movie to a few hard drives and hand them out in person, or send their local cinema a link to a torrent of their work and offer it to be screened for free or at minimal costs. The potential for new, unsigned work and interesting local cinema is massive, if only the big players don't lock the system down with horrible license fees.
"Of course you can show your indy film on our projection gear, it's free! Oh, but the codec will cost you thirty grand." etc...etc...etc...
Digital Cinema Implementation Partners today revealed a technology to send movies without physically moving hard drives. They have patented this innovative technology and tentatively named it Film Transfer Protocol (FTP).
...until the cost of the digital projector comes down drastically this idea won't be popular.
I still think they should distribute the movie on specially-encrypted HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, where the movie is stored in a lossless compression format over 2-3 discs. It's still way cheaper to send out 2-3 discs per movie than six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film stock for a movie about two hours long. More long term, once holographic video disc (HVD) technology reaches production they could store 1 TB on a single disc, more than enough space for a high-quality digital projection version of a two hour movie plus multiple language soundtracks and maybe dozens of language subtitle tracks.
I actually had a chance to meet with Walt Ordway, the head of DCI's technology branch, at my school a few years ago (he's a Northeastern University Alumnus). He gave a really nice presentation about what they're doing to secure the distribution masters and minimize piracy. Basically, they have a Digital Source Master (DCM) which is a final cut of the movie in a high definition format taken directly from post-processing. From this, they make various distribution masters in different formats for DVD, TV, Airline showings, and also conversion to film masters. One of the masters they make is a Digital Cinema Distribution Master. After processing, this is what is actually sent to the cinemas.
m _Spec_v1.pdf
After all the video, audio, subtitle, and auxiliary data channels (things like cues for curtains, theater lighting, etc.) are compressed and packaged, it's encrypted via AES with a 128-bit key. Along with the compression and encryption process, a watermark is embedded into the video source. The Digital Cinema Package (DCP), as it is now called, is delivered to the theater via satellite uplink, hard drive delivery, internet, etc. However, the encryption key is delivered separately, via secure courier, and each theater will get a different key. The DCP is uploaded into a central server in the theater, where it will then be scheduled by the manager to be loaded into a specific screen on a set schedule. Each screen will have a digital projector along with its own server to store a local copy of the DCP.
Key entry and decryption only actually happens when the movie is played, and as everything is decrypted, the forensic watermark is added to the video as well as the audio. This watermark is unique not only to the theater, but to the specific projector and even the time that it was played. This ensures that if anyone is sitting in a theater with a camcorder, they can trace it back to the exact showing using the embedded watermarks.
If anyone is interested in checking out the Digital Cinema System Specifications, they were awarded final approval on July 20, 2005 and can be found at http://www.dcimovies.com/DCI_Digital_Cinema_Syste
*looks to slashdot headline* duhhhh... duhhh... *looks to BT window* duhhh... duhhhh.... *looks back and forth* duhhhh... huh?
"but come on....do a little better than that. Theaters are a thing of the past"
People said the same thing about LP's and they're still being made.
"Tell me why the hell am I going to pay a crap load of money for a shitty experience? "
Guess that's why you don't have a slashdot subscription.
"A lot of times most movie theaters are run by teenagers who barely have any respect for anyone and can care less about your experience."
Travel much?
"MPAA and studios....move on, please. Get in the 21st century. Thanks, bye."
This just in, DVD's are no longer being made. The MPAA say they're going back to shadow puppets.
OK, I can beat this recent news. Bittorrent has been distributing movies on not 14,000 screens, but 140 million screens for several years now. Not all of the content is original, but some of it is, and its really good. It would be a fairly minor step to have someone go to a torrent site, watch the ad while getting the torrent. The torrent contains legal to download (intended to be distributed in this fashion) movie content. The creator of the film gets revenues from the site, and the site gets revenue from google ad sense. Think of it as a version of Youtube but for professional film makers, with clips like Youtube, but torrent files for getting anything past 10 minutes. The film makers would not get revenues like those for Hollywood films, but they could still earn $20,000 per week (for several years). Not exactly chicken feed.
This could be a bad idea.
1) someone gets the key.
2) some dish equipment.
3) high quality movie on P2P.
This could end up being easier then camming the movie.
If you look through the document you linked, the security section is 25 pages long, while only a few pages are dedicated to image and sound. For the image, the system mostly talks about 2K, with some additional modes for 4K, but no requirement to use it, and no inclusion of the higher framerate 48fps mode for 4K. Considering there are already 4K film releases and 2K is already in the home, this does not seem very forward thinking. Home theater freaks have been saying for years what they have at home is better than what's in theaters. For the first time, they will actually be right, if theatrical 2K becomes the de-facto standard (which it already has to some extent, thanks to an overload of crappy 2K digital intermediates).
Another short-sighted mistake is that it defines the image as a constant width format, meaning you get fewer pixels for a scope image vs. non-scope. Does that seem backwards to anyone else? The 2K scope image only has 858 vertical pixels, for crying out loud! (page 14)
Page 14 also specifies: "The bit depth for each code value for a color component shall be 12 bits. This yields 36 bits per pixel." Doesn't say whether it's linear or log (like Cineon). I assume linear, but considering most linear film work is done in a 16-bit space (see the GIMP spin-off "CinePaint), this doesn't seem like enough. All theatrical digital presentations I've seen so far have been severely lacking in dynamic range compared to film. This document totally fails to address that.
There is also a data limitation of just over 1MB per frame, regardless of whether the image is 2K or 4K (page 25). That's just stupid (hopefully I don't have to explain why).
There seems to have been very little consideration given to quality for either the present or the future. Simply slapping a big HDTV into theaters is a bad, short-sighted idea, and will surely be a further nail in the coffin for theatrical presentations. AMC for example has lost money for nine years straight, and now they want to dump money into this shit?
Free Hans!
On a different subject, why are they even worrying about camcorder piracy in theatres? Who in their right mind would watch such crap anyway?
How I wish I could get to see a single 4K frame. Or at least a crop to see how much detail it has.
Depending on distance, and capacity, the bandwidth of a hard disk drive can be pretty impressive.
It's because standard PAL/NTSC video doesn't work with complete "frames". The picture is made up of a set of lines. Rather than drawing all these at once, all the odd-numbered lines are drawn, *then* all the even-numbered ones. (This is what's meant by "interlacing").
There are 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) such "half-frames" (fields) per second. This is why video has a more fluid look than film; motion is still being updated at 50 or 60fps, albeit not at complete resolution. So although there are still 25 or 30 complete redraws of the screen per second, any moving object will be shown moving at 50/60 fps.
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If it is about comfort you are probably right. But there are films that are just better at the cinema because of the collective experience. In other words, there are aspects of "quality" that you can't replicate at home because you don't have a large number of people watching it with you.
Similarly, many people pay more to watch sports or listen to music live rather than on TV or CD.
rt
#1: tv didn't kill the movie houses in the 1950s, and people thought tv was going to kill movie houses in the 1950s. ask yourself why
#2: paraphrasing from my earlier post:
#3: sitting in front of your 19 inch monitor by yourself in your basement next to your whirring hard drive. yeah, so exciting
#4: look at the box office returns. here's your dying theatres
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it's been done. it's not as good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like anything, it depends on what they want to charge me. If they want to charge me everytime I want to view the same video, then yes - yes, there is still a reason to "own" the media.
It's sad that is has to be that way, really. Because what you describe would be very very cool. They could become what you describe. But at this point, it's difficult to see how that can become reality.