Disney on board for new anti-piracy Oscar DVDs

Yeah, yeah, we know leaked screener DVDs from Academy Awards judges could easily bring civilization to a grinding halt, but it sure seems like those movie moguls will go through a lot of crap just to keep a lock on their precious cinema. Walt Disney Co. is the first to announce support of a new anti-piracy scheme that locks the screener DVDs to playback on specific players from Dolby's Cinea unit. Cinea is shipping out 12,000 of the ultra-secure players to all the crazy piraters Academy members that will be screening this year's movies, so it looks like there might not be any bit torrent joy this year — um, yeah, right.

[EvanWasHere @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

And how would u stop someone from hooking up a DVR to the component/S-Video cable from the output of this DVD player and copying the feed. I'm sure that there can't be some special output only from these players. They didn't say anything about everyone getting 10,000 new TVs. Specially that a lot of these Academy voters have multi million dollar screening rooms. They wouldn't want to have to get all new gear.

[charlie @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

I dont understand... if this "Dolby Cinea" still outputs in DVI or HDMI, thats still all digital. Seems like a lot of money put to waste.

[John @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Will the secure player include a secure screen that can only be seen by human eyes and not by say, huh, a camera?

[mike @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

I am just going to have to set up my DV cam on a tripod in the room and yea the quality isn't perfect but pretty damn close. Kiss my white ass MPAA/RIAA....

[billflu @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

The only way to completely stop piracy is to stop creating things that can be pirated.

[dudeInAmerica @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Does output to any type of viewing device?!?!

HACKED!!

[Pocky @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Yes I was thinking the same thing #3. They can do all they want with encrypting the file, but you can beat the camcorder on a tripod. Maybe since they have all the money to ship out 12,000 of these players, they could just tell the members to fly to some central screening places? Or maybe they'll ship out 12,000 security guards to go with the players.

[Fin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

How come nobody ever bothers to ask any of us if an idea like this is ridiculous before they commit tons of cash to it? We should all be able to get lucrative contracting gigs debunking stupidity like this before it ever gets out of a boardroom. On the other hand, massive congrats are due to our engineering peers who get rich selling stupid schemes like this to suits. :p

[Scott @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

The point of this is to prevent academy members from 'loaning' their screeners to others. Most (all?) the problems from the academy member screeners come from other people (so called friends) doing the copying. Those in the academy make their money working in the movie business so would be non-inclined to pirate. It also makes it less critical to destroy the DVD after viewing.

[James @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Just use this:

http://www.spatz-tech.de/spatz/dvi_hdcp.htm

to remove the HDCP on HDMI output.

[highspeedhamish @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

I know this was coming, my former building owner, a veteran Hollywood sound engineer explained the whole thing to me and a friend who managed his building for him. And basically it works like they say... in fact, Warner Brothers who he works for has already implemented it.

They each ( academy award members) have an assigned DVD player. Encoded with it, a serial number attached to thier personal info. A courier brings them the movies ( all of them considered for academy awards.. even the ones that you dont hear about)... if the package in ANY way shape or form has been opened, tampered etc.. they MUST phone a special number, have the courier sign a form, they sign a form, the movie goes back. Each movie is encoded to work in the ASSIGNED dvd player ONLY. So in a nutshell,if they leak it... they somehow can tell who did it. Im sure like anything they try, someone will beat it.. its a matter of time. If it can done, it can be undone.

[Chris Gregg @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

> So in a nutshell,if they leak it... they somehow can tell who did it.

This would seem to be the key. Why don't they just put a watermark of some sort on the DVD output? I imagine something could even be developed that would show through on a video of the screen (with the proper equipment to decode it). I don't know if it would be feasible to do this for 12k DVDs, but then again, it could be easily automated.

[DM @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Why dont they just ship the screeners on those self destructing DVDs ?

[Pal @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

It's about damn time somebody stopped releasing the damn screeners. Sure, I've benefitted from them in the past, but it's ridiculous how fast those things spread. I'd suggest, as #6 also said, to fly the members over to see it in a screening theatre. Metal detectors will be present as well. Oh yeah.

No wonder the movie industry is slowly dying. If a movie sucks, we'll just rent it or download it. If it's really good, we might watch go see it in a theatre, wait for it on DVD since it's cheap or just download it.

Pirating has become to commonplace and guilt-free these days.

[Gordy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Man, I actually enjoyed the Oscars last year. I saw 95% of the nominees! Thank you BT!

Here's hoping I enjoy this year's too.