[codemiscreant]

There is essentially zero piracy from these digital cinema releases. The pirate copies are generally from once it starts digitally streaming on one of the services including PPV, and when pirate copies exist earlier it is almost always someone with a camera in a theatre making a terrible quality screener.

Piracy is inevitable, but in this case their model is much more robust that I would have predicted.

[kelnos]

Not sure of the GP's core message there, but I think this is kinda the point: even with all this onerous encryption on the cinema releases, high-quality pirated copies still very quickly make it out.

So basically they have this very secure scheme for getting movies to theaters, but everything else is full of holes. Makes you wonder if all the effort and cost to secure the theater distribution chain is worth it. If you're going to allow playback on devices in "adversarial" hands (streaming, home physical media playback), it's going to be incredibly difficult to restrict copying. Tightening up the one instance where the hardware and people operating it have less incentive to pirate (and more incentive to not pirate, given the risk to their theater business) seems like wasted effort.

Certainly this does make the case of a theater-only-first release nearly impossible to pirate. But there aren't quite as many of those anymore, and all this DRM must be expensive, both in the hardware/software, and in the logistics. I guess they've found it's worth it, but... oof.

[jasode]

>If you're going to allow playback on devices in "adversarial" hands (streaming, home physical media playback), it's going to be incredibly difficult to restrict copying.

Kaleidescape movie players[1][2] are an example of an "adversarial" environment in customers' homes but so far, their DRM is still unbroken by pirates. (10+ years of Strato players deployed out in the wild but still not defeated yet.)

The 4k 100+ GB encrypted files downloaded by Kaleidescape is considered 1 step below the DCP theater releases and are higher quality than Blu-Ray 4k UHD discs. The downloads are often 40+ GB larger than 66 GB discs and downloadable months before physical media is available so the Kaleidescape movies stored on the customers' harddrive are very desirable files to hack and reverse engineer but so far, their DRM protection hasn't been bypassed. Kaleidescape is more locked down than the simple DVD CSS 40-bit encryption.

Sure, a Kaledescape owner could point a video camera at the screen and record it (the "analog hole"[3]) -- but those types of "rips" that suffer generation losses are not considered high quality.

[1] https://www.kaleidescape.com/systems/movie-players-servers/

[2] https://www.kaleidescape.com/news/kaleidescape-taps-nexguard...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

[crazygringo]

> Certainly this does make the case of a theater-only-first release nearly impossible to pirate. But there aren't quite as many of those anymore, and all this DRM must be expensive, both in the hardware/software, and in the logistics. I guess they've found it's worth it, but... oof.

Yes, that's the entire point. There are still tons of theater releases, that's literally the entire business of cinemas. The cost of DRM is peanuts next to their revenue, it's absolutely worth it to them. Nothing "oof" about it.

[tptacek]

Most importantly, the industry concerns itself primarily with the new-release window; that high fidelity copies will eventually be widely available doesn't break the model.

[kelnos]

I suppose this would help keep pirated copies from getting out before the theatrical release date (presumably theaters are given these digital releases at least days before their first projection date).

But it seems that more and more releases are straight-to-streaming, and/or sometimes simultaneous with the theatrical release. High-quality pirated copies often show up within a day of a streaming release. Sure, many are still theater-only for a week or more after initial release.

I get that a big part of their business model for some titles relies on theater ticket sales within the first days or at most weeks after release, but all this DRM just feels like an exhausting, expensive, ultimately-losing game for them. Especially when we consider how theater-going has declined over time, especially recently.

[dvngnt_]

Back in my day the first releases were cam rips sold on dvds for $3-5 per movie. quality wasn't great but the audio could be ripped from the devices for hearing impaired https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesync

quality varied but was good enough in mid 00's probably better

[teeray]

> it is almost always someone with a camera in a theatre making a terrible quality screener.

Could an insider do a more sophisticated telecine capture with more fidelity?

[sandworm101]

There is zero piracy from projectors because there are a multitude of easier places to rip from. But close those doors, limit to only theatrical releases, and we will again see content pulled from projectors and underpaid projectionists.

The only way to prevent piracy, to actually prevent copying, is to keep content in a dark vault well away from public view.