The movie at a cinema isn't a regular mp4 file, it's a massive 100-300gb proprietary file that needs a valid license key to even be played back during a specific time period. Good luck decrypting the file or getting the company that issues the keys to the cinemas to give you a key because you're not getting it to play early. Iirc somehow the Korean rip of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie was leaked early and something similar happened with the My Little Pony movie, but those fan bases are incredibly autistic and will find a way.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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so what you're saying is that we must infiltrate the drm company and plant a secret backdoor that can be used to bypass the activation key
probably easier to mess with the projector so it records a local file that is a copy of what is being projected, which would already been decrypted. With this if you can infiltrate the DRM company you only need the schematics of the projector, not an active malware to steal new keys.
I'd infiltrate said company only to make sure it goes bankrupt asap
that's a good question, what would happen to the movie if the company behind the drm goes under? i assume that cinemas have some contingency to still be able to play the movie in that case right?
Unless the companies sell their DRM as a service instead of a per-movie-product, nothing would happen, I suppose, other than no more customer support. I suspect any online checks the DRM does is with the movie owners rather than the software developer.
Yeah, there's no need to pirate at the cinema when you can pirate at the studio. Anyway how in my Lord Satan they made that file that huge, it's 12K resolution or what?
It's either 2K or 4K video. The bitrate needs to be high because any compression artifacts would be very obvious on a huge screen.
Again it's not a traditional video file. Iirc its a series of really high quality unconpressed images being played back at once with audio. The max resolution is is 4k but even the 1080p films can be 100gb. The real knee slapper is when the video's resolution is 4k but the projector is old so it can only output max 1080p.
No just not a crappy 10gb encode.
Since the companies are not limited by media size (cd,dvd,bluray) why would they use heavy codec settings to decrease the visual experience?
My understanding is the media and projectors are heavily tied together with strict DRM. This is why you see cams with direct audio hookups, but not direct video rips
afaik audio hookups are recording of radio broadcasts for impaired not unauthorised rips of media used in cinema or recordings made using some tricks with wires and clamps.
Last time I looked at the topic (several years ago in a now deleted reddit post); someone had posted info on the projector system.
The media is delivered on a battery backed up rack-mount pc with proprietary connectors and a dozen anti-tamper switches in the case. If it detects meddling; it wipes itself. You're not likely to grab a copy from there.
As the other commenter mentioned; the projector and media are heavily protected with DRM, encrypting the stream all the way up to the projector itself. You can pull an audio feed off the sound board; but you're stuck with a camera for video.
Now i wonder what it does when battery dies, whether it wipes itself or not. And where it stores it's keys, in TPM or in RAM or where.
Pretty sure the media itself is stored in ram, or similar volatile memory; so it wipes automatically on powerloss.
Friends in other comments suggested that the file is 100-300gb size, it's quite a lot of RAM if you asked me, but not much for a harddrive. If i were to design this machnie would store the movie heavily encrypted on a harddisk and store keys in RAM. Sb ealier mentioned you need special keys from special compamy to decrypt it so it would be doubly encrypted, one key stored in RAM and another inputed by technican. Ofc if i were to design this i would try to make it piratable by introducing some "accidential" vuln.
Too many engineers involved, there wouldn't be a single point of failure like that by design.
I think they hide information in the video to be able to find out where a leak came from
Ratatouille famously did this, with actual scene elements rather than digital watermarking.
There's a scene with a poster in the background. Every copy of the movie had different digits on the poster, I think with a unique ID for each cinema they were sent to. When a leak came out they could check the ID and know exactly which avenue it was leaked from.
You say Ratatouille did this famously. But I can't find any references. Do you have some?
Yeah they got unique water mark these days.
Sounds reasonable, but they won't be able to take it out, they would only be able to not send new movies there.
They also will be able to sue the enterprise behind the cinema
If it's not a 3rd world country ofc.
You can do anything with unsupervised physical access. The signal has to be decrypted at some point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Going that way is a great way to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Messing with their equipment is going not going to end well.
Not nowadays with the DRM they use. Back in the actual-film days it was doable, and called a telecine
Don't they have special projectors sent from the companies these days?
If they had reals still, sure. But I don't think cracking the hardware is going to work.