5 ms·

As others have said, this seems to be the perfect place to fight piracy. At present time most movies do not have high quality releases until the blu-ray discs a

As others have said, this seems to be the perfect place to fight piracy. At present time most movies do not have high quality releases until the blu-ray discs are manufactured. When a movie goes to blu-ray 720p and 1080p copies are instantly released online. Having those movies available online opening weekend, if not before opening weekend, could be disastrous.

Groxx 14y ago
They already are in quite a few circumstances. It hasn't collapsed the industry yet - there are other reasons to go to a movie theater than to see the movie. As a concrete example, there are tens of thousands of seeders of Prometheus right now at a couple sites I just checked. And quite a few people I know, who know exactly how to use torrents, went to see it in the theater.
- ditoa 14y ago
  Several thousand seeders of a CAM copy of Prometheus not a 1080p BluRay rip. Big difference!
  - Thlom 14y ago
    Audio and video watermarking is soon mandatory and playback will be impossible without it. Guess that will stop much of the CAM business.
    - Retric 14y ago
      I don' think you can prevent analog camera's from recording video with watermarking. If you somehow prevent windows from playing back video based on some watermark scheme someone will just write a Linux program that strips / adds watermarks.
      - Thlom 14y ago
        I guess a lot of the CAM pirates works in the cinema business. With watermarking the studios can find out exactly which auditorium it has been recorded in. I guess that will discourage a few pirates ...
    - ditoa 14y ago
      We already have audio watermarking with Cineva which stops mutes playback on devices such as the PS3. Obviously the media player needs to implement detection of Cineva and then block playback (or audio in the case of Cineva which I believe causes the player the mute the audio). I very much doubt VideoLAN and MPC-HC will implement such things however I can see Windows Media Player and other "official" media players implementing it. Cineva is interesting as from what I have read it can survive even pretty extreme audio changes so even the audio from a CAM copy with crappy mono sound will still carry the watermark from capture to encoded MP4 (or whatever you capture to). I have not seen any statistics on how successful it actually is at surviving in real world use though.
- astrodust 14y ago
  Since the chance of a new Blu-Ray standard coming out that supports 4K is zero and given that the movies are already encoded in this format for the cinema, stands to reason these will get ripped, transcoded, and dumped on BitTorrent as soon as High-DPI screens become more common on computers. 1080p looks great and all, but 4K is simply stunning in comparison.
  - wvenable 14y ago
    In your own home, with a standard 50" TV, would there actually be any visible difference between 1080p and 4K? Aren't we reaching the limits of human perception?
    - jgh 14y ago
      Did Apple not just release a notebook with a 200-something dpi screen?
      - arethuza 14y ago
        I don't know about you, but I sit somewhat further away from our 50" TV than I do to this 17" laptop. Probably about 4m or so. Having said that, even at that distance high quality HD content is noticeably better than standard resolution content.
    - lmm 14y ago
      From far enough away anything looks good. If you look at the THX recommendations for cinema setup, they add up to something like a 60 degree viewing angle on the screen. To match human eye resolution you want approximately one pixel every 0.3-0.4 arc minutes; let's say 3 pixels / arc minute, or 180 pixels/degree. So for a screen that was "perfect" up to the limits of human perception, taking up a cinema-screen-sized area of your vision, you'd need at least 180*60~=10000 horizontal pixels. We're approaching the limits of human perception, but we're not there yet; 4K does seem like a useful improvement over 1080
    - astrodust 14y ago
      A 50" TV today is like a 15" computer screen was fifteen years ago. What about the future where you can pick up a 200" screen at Costco for $300? 1080p is decent enough for a ~50" TV, but for 60"+ you'd probably want 2K and for 100"+ you'd almost certainly appreciate 4K.
- forrestthewoods 14y ago
  Prometheus is leaked only as a camrip. Do you know how terrible camrip quality is? Do a google image search for "Prometheus camrip". Now compare and contrast that to the 1080p trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPW015u8m-g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPW015u8m-g). Camrips are not a serious threat. Day zero 1080p 5.1 leaks most certainly are.
zmb_ 14y ago
If someone really wanted to make a pirate version off of a cinema copy, they could. This DRM, like all DRM, is pointless since by definition you must be able to decrypt the stream at some point, and at that point a copy can be made. The rest is just security through obscurity.

Groxx 14y ago

They already are in quite a few circumstances. It hasn't collapsed the industry yet - there are other reasons to go to a movie theater than to see the movie. As a concrete example, there are tens of thousands of seeders of Prometheus right now at a couple sites I just checked. And quite a few people I know, who know exactly how to use torrents, went to see it in the theater.

ditoa 14y ago
Several thousand seeders of a CAM copy of Prometheus not a 1080p BluRay rip. Big difference!
- Thlom 14y ago
  Audio and video watermarking is soon mandatory and playback will be impossible without it. Guess that will stop much of the CAM business.
  - Retric 14y ago
    I don' think you can prevent analog camera's from recording video with watermarking. If you somehow prevent windows from playing back video based on some watermark scheme someone will just write a Linux program that strips / adds watermarks.
    - Thlom 14y ago
      I guess a lot of the CAM pirates works in the cinema business. With watermarking the studios can find out exactly which auditorium it has been recorded in. I guess that will discourage a few pirates ...
  - ditoa 14y ago
    We already have audio watermarking with Cineva which stops mutes playback on devices such as the PS3. Obviously the media player needs to implement detection of Cineva and then block playback (or audio in the case of Cineva which I believe causes the player the mute the audio). I very much doubt VideoLAN and MPC-HC will implement such things however I can see Windows Media Player and other "official" media players implementing it. Cineva is interesting as from what I have read it can survive even pretty extreme audio changes so even the audio from a CAM copy with crappy mono sound will still carry the watermark from capture to encoded MP4 (or whatever you capture to). I have not seen any statistics on how successful it actually is at surviving in real world use though.
astrodust 14y ago
Since the chance of a new Blu-Ray standard coming out that supports 4K is zero and given that the movies are already encoded in this format for the cinema, stands to reason these will get ripped, transcoded, and dumped on BitTorrent as soon as High-DPI screens become more common on computers. 1080p looks great and all, but 4K is simply stunning in comparison.
- wvenable 14y ago
  In your own home, with a standard 50" TV, would there actually be any visible difference between 1080p and 4K? Aren't we reaching the limits of human perception?
  - jgh 14y ago
    Did Apple not just release a notebook with a 200-something dpi screen?
    - arethuza 14y ago
      I don't know about you, but I sit somewhat further away from our 50" TV than I do to this 17" laptop. Probably about 4m or so. Having said that, even at that distance high quality HD content is noticeably better than standard resolution content.
  - lmm 14y ago
    From far enough away anything looks good. If you look at the THX recommendations for cinema setup, they add up to something like a 60 degree viewing angle on the screen. To match human eye resolution you want approximately one pixel every 0.3-0.4 arc minutes; let's say 3 pixels / arc minute, or 180 pixels/degree. So for a screen that was "perfect" up to the limits of human perception, taking up a cinema-screen-sized area of your vision, you'd need at least 180*60~=10000 horizontal pixels. We're approaching the limits of human perception, but we're not there yet; 4K does seem like a useful improvement over 1080
  - astrodust 14y ago
    A 50" TV today is like a 15" computer screen was fifteen years ago. What about the future where you can pick up a 200" screen at Costco for $300? 1080p is decent enough for a ~50" TV, but for 60"+ you'd probably want 2K and for 100"+ you'd almost certainly appreciate 4K.
forrestthewoods 14y ago
Prometheus is leaked only as a camrip. Do you know how terrible camrip quality is? Do a google image search for "Prometheus camrip". Now compare and contrast that to the 1080p trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPW015u8m-g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPW015u8m-g). Camrips are not a serious threat. Day zero 1080p 5.1 leaks most certainly are.

zmb_ 14y ago

If someone really wanted to make a pirate version off of a cinema copy, they could. This DRM, like all DRM, is pointless since by definition you must be able to decrypt the stream at some point, and at that point a copy can be made. The rest is just security through obscurity.