Audio Watermarks Could Pinpoint Film Pirates By Seat

Slatterz points out a brief mention at PC Authority of a story at Torrent freak about using watermarking embedded in movies' soundtracks to reveal the exact location of camera-wielding bootleggers in a theater; the inventors (here's an abstract of their paper) claim it's accurate to within 44 centimeters.

Comments

That will not work. Pirates will use FM feed.

[tepples]

Most cinemas that I've been to lately have micro-power FM transmitters that broadcast the audio in each screening room, for the benefit of people with hearing impairment who bring their own radios and listen on headphones. If the pirates were to use audio from this FM feed, the camera could be anywhere in the room and nobody would know.

Re:And who cares, anyway?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I have copies of Bolt and Quantum of Solace. Neither are out on DVD yet. Yes, I admit that they are pirated copies acquired through less than noble means. I had no intention of ever seeing either movie, and frankly, the rating on Bolt is a pretty big fuckup.

Neither are cam copies - they are rips of the copies sent by the studio to the Oscars for consideration. (QoS has the subtitle "For your consideration"; Bolt has "property of Disney - do not copy".)

I'm not sure why the studios are ripping their own movies and putting them in... places, but they sure aren't cam copies.

Re:so what?

[timothy]

I like US-style non-assigned seats. But I just took a trip to Israel, and the theater at which I saw Slumdog Millionaire (packed!) assigned seats, and it was actually good in one way -- the people you're squashing on the way to your seat have less growling resentment when they know you're trampling them only to get to the seat you've been assigned, rather than because you're an idiot ;)

timothy

Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre

[im_thatoneguy]

I went to New Zealand last year and went to a movie in Christchurch. It was a pretty odd experience. It had assigned seating.

I ignored it since there were only like 4 other people in the theater but the seats were awesome. Think lazyboy. And the aisles were large enough for someone to walk past you with out moving, or them even needing to turn sideways. I would say there were less than 200 seats in the theater. And it was a medium sized theater. Oh yeah and the ticket price was ~$7 US and the food was normally priced.

I don't know if that's indicative of your average NZ theater, but it does live up to the "assigned seating" requirement.

Re:Useless Information

[Firehed]

They've been doing that for quite a while, actually. Ever seen a bunch of red dots flash onscreen for a frame a couple times during a movie? (if not, you will now - sorry) Those are to determine what theatre a leaked cam copy came from.