
DRM in the cinema - mwilcox
https://astortheatreblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/what-happened-last-night/
======
trimbo
Ex-VFX guy here again. I feel like I have to comment on these threads because
I'm thrilled to see 35mm film die.[1] The DRM sucks but....

> There are instances in the US already where some studios are refusing to
> freight 35mm film prints to cinemas.

Yeah, because it's crazy _expensive_. It costs ~$1500 to strike and ship a
35mm print[2]. Also, did you know that prints are delivered by some
specialized delivery company? They're not just shipped around by FedEx. I
can't remember the name of the company right now.

This incident sucks for them but I feel like this move to digital is great for
the environment and a better moviegoing experience. I love the rock-solid
picture with awesome contrast, and not to mention the lack of nasty chemical
process in order to create it.

[1] - My original comment on "RIP Movie Camera":
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114120>

[2] - [http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-
digita...](http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-digital-
Hollywood/)

~~~
cdcarter
I work for a group of venues that recently opened a film screening room that
can handle almost all digital formats, 16mm, and 35mm prints. And we in fact
ship our prints almost exclusively by FedEx. I had to take a canister to the
local shop on a dolly just the other day.

Though, they are super expensive to ship. Maybe it's a regional thing, the
delivery? Here in Mass you need to be a licensed projectionist due to the
flammability.

~~~
trimbo
> And we in fact ship our prints almost exclusively by FedEx. I had to take a
> canister to the local shop on a dolly just the other day

Huh. Go figure. Maybe things have changed. The only reference I've been able
to find is on this page: [http://business.highbeam.com/industry-
reports/personal/servi...](http://business.highbeam.com/industry-
reports/personal/services-allied-to-motion-picture-distribution)

 _Film delivery services, also known as film carriers, were usually classified
under the transportation services industry, in particular SIC 4213: Trucking
Except Local, but belonged under both classifications because of their unique
services. Film carriers were specialized transportation companies serving the
needs of motion picture theaters by delivering and picking up rented
theatrical films. Film was transported between the cinemas and the national
network of film exchanges, or film depots, or directly between theaters, based
on their booking schedules. Metal canisters of 16mm or 35mm film were
delivered to the theaters, usually on a weekly basis. Unlike other delivery
services, film carriers had keys to the theaters they supplied so they could
drop off and pick up film when the theater was closed. Most delivery was done
by truck or van because of the heavy weight of the film canisters, which made
them impractical for air freight, except in rush circumstances. Film carriers
served only theaters, since other organizations that screened films tended to
use the more easily transportable videotape format, or else had only
occasional film needs, which could be handled by any non-specialized delivery
service. There were fewer than 40 major film delivery companies throughout the
country that served nearly the entire theater market. Most served up to a
couple hundred theaters, some covering a region comprising several states.
There were also a commensurate number of smaller film carriers that
exclusively served single theater chains of around 15 to 20 theaters. Films
generally weigh about 62 pounds, and are often accompanied by large cardboard
stand-up displays and other promotional items theaters place in lobbies._

~~~
cdcarter
They certainly do weigh that much. We have a regular delivery scheduled with
FedEx, but we have to meet them at our lockbox and open it for them. We may be
slightly different as we aren't primarily a film venue.

This is incredibly interesting though. How such specialized industries develop
and evaporate.

------
spdy
This is fighting piracy on the wrong level. Some people must be so afraid that
someone could copy their "work" that they put a chain on the most trusted
place.

 _The KDM unlocks the content of the file and allows the cinema to play the
film. It is time sensitive and often is only valid from around 10 minutes
prior to the screening time and expiring as close to 5 minutes after the
scheduled time._

This made me shiver... no delays allowed at all. I dont want to know how many
employees got bitten by that.

~~~
forrestthewoods
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
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.

~~~
astrodust
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
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
Did Apple not just release a notebook with a 200-something dpi screen?

~~~
arethuza
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.

------
smacktoward
This is the part that made me cringe:

 _The [DRM key] arrives as an email zip attachment that then needs to be
unzipped, saved onto a memory stick and uploaded onto the server._

Seriously? That's how we're delivering time-sensitive digital information? In
_2012_? Ugh, it makes my head spin.

Is there some reason that the projector can't be connected to the network
directly, so the vendor can push the key straight to it without all the
sneakernet nonsense?

~~~
anigbrowl
Live by the sword, die by the sword. If you ask a bunch of hackers how to make
a mission-critical application secure, one of the top answers is going to be
'air gap.' In economic terms, security has greater value (to the publishers)
than the mild inconvenience of a few shows starting late.

~~~
geon
The actual transmission of the key could be done over a custom channel, like a
serial connection only used to read the drm key. It would be even more secure
than using a usb stick.

~~~
Thlom
The key is useless without the server and feature it is issued for. There is
no need to secure the transmission of the key. Automated delivery over http(s)
is starting to get more and more normal (most screen servers don't have such
capabilities yet, so you will need a Theatre Management System or separate box
which will receieve the key and deliver it to the server).

~~~
geon
My point wasn't to make the transmission secure (since it would one be a 50 cm
wire between two boxes in the projection room), but to isolate the screen
server from the internet.

Even if the internet connected box gets hacked, they have no chance of
accessing the screen server through the serial cable.

------
ken
This is why I love analog, and not just in the sense of "I'm an old fart and
old things are better" (though I'm sure there's a good dose of that), but
because there's a whole spectrum between "working" and "not working".

(Environmental issues aside, that is -- I recognize that the chemicals needed
to manufacture and develop traditional film are pretty nasty.)

With digital, if it works, it's 100%, which is great, but if it doesn't work,
it's 0%, and that can make it hard to even get a grip on what the problem is
or which direction to go to find a solution. (DRM just makes this worse.) I've
got some weird routing to my TV because the obvious HDMI connection doesn't
work, and how do you troubleshoot that?

I once went to a theatre where the projectionist came out and announced that
they had just broken a lens (apparently they had the largest lenses in town at
the time) and couldn't project the film as they wanted to. They offered a
refund, but for those who stayed, let us vote on what to do: use a smaller
lens and see the film normally but smaller, or use the proper size lens but
put up with 3-4 minute pauses every 20 minutes. Everyone stayed, and we chose
the latter (who wants to see a small movie in a theatre?), and I don't think
it was the _wrong_ choice, but I learned that changeovers are not like
commercial breaks: some of them are in really inconvenient places in the film,
plot-wise!

That's a situation that could never happen with a new digital projection
system. The odd thing is that even though we groaned at how poorly-timed the
changeovers were, in my mind the whole event is an overwhelmingly positive
memory. I learned something about how projection systems work, and we got to
interact with the projectionist, and it was a unique movie night we got to
talk about, and I even enjoyed the movie still. We sometimes act as though the
only goal of cinema is to reproduce every pixel and soundwave perfectly, but
my most enjoyable movie experiences don't correlate to that, and in this case
is almost the polar opposite.

I suppose I'm a bit weird like that.

~~~
shabble
_I once went to a theatre where the projectionist came out and announced that
they had just broken a lens (apparently they had the largest lenses in town at
the time) and couldn't project the film as they wanted to. They offered a
refund, but for those who stayed, let us vote on what to do: use a smaller
lens and see the film normally but smaller, or use the proper size lens but
put up with 3-4 minute pauses every 20 minutes. Everyone stayed, and we chose
the latter (who wants to see a small movie in a theatre?), and I don't think
it was the wrong choice, but I learned that changeovers are not like
commercial breaks: some of them are in really inconvenient places in the film,
plot-wise!_

I might be misunderstanding something about cinema projection, but how does a
broken lens lead to 20-minute segmentation? The only things I can think of are
perhaps it has some sort of cooling mechanism (I know the bulbs do emit
massive quantities of heat) that needed a chance to cool off, or they were
somehow playing it on a different projector which couldn't handle a full film-
reel?

Certainly a more interesting experience than the few glitches I've encountered
including "Yes, we know you've been complaining since the 3rd minute of
playback that we had the aspect ratio wrong, but we're only going to fix it
now, 70% of the way through the film"

~~~
jgroome
_> but how does a broken lens lead to 20-minute segmentation?_

I think a "proper" analogue theatre has two projectors. With the films split
into reels, one reel is played through one projector, and then when it's time
to switch to the next reel, the projectionist cues it up on the second
projector, and then switches between the two. Like a DJ mixing records, I
suppose.

So if one lens is broken, they need to stop the film, feed in the second reel,
then carry on playing. Hence the 20 minute break.

I may be wrong about this. Other commenters seem to be former projectionists;
I'm just some guy who's seen Fight Club ;)

~~~
aladds
This is exactly right; although not all "proper" theaters have two projectors.
Where I work we have one and a "long play" tower which allows us to play the
whole film with one projector.

Many still do run changeover systems, though.

(In case you're interested, I work in an indie cinema in the UK, and we're
really scared about the costs of changing to digital, which we will need to do
in the next 12 months)

------
tantalor
> the projectionist can’t test to see if the KDM works or that the quality of
> the film is right before show time

This seems like a simple and critical feature. If the distributor wishes to
impose these extreme constraints on the projectionist, then the projectionist
needs to know its going to work well in advance. The projectionist shouldn't
even need to be in the room when the movie starts.

I've run into this pattern a lot in web development. If you want a feature to
go live at 6:00pm, you don't release it at 5:59pm and just hope it works. You
_program_ it to go automatically flip at 6:00pm and release the code early.
The pre-programmed time can be overridden in the production environment, so
you can easily test and know for sure (or as close as possible to sure)
whether it will flip at 6:00pm or not.

(I'm not saying my solution is perfect, just better than the naive solution.)

~~~
quanticle
Except that in this case, you _can't_ test. The only way to test is to load
the movie, load a key and play the movie. No key? No movie, and no test. In
addition, there is no way the distributor will let you have a "test" key. One
of those would be manna from heaven for any unsavory projectionist who wanted
to make high quality copies from theater prints.

~~~
tomsaffell
No test key required. Inputting the actual key prior to the scheduled slot
should cause the projector to show a randomly chosen 30 second segment of the
movie, with an overlay message at the bottom saying, "Test projection - key
valid starting at HH:MM on dd/mm/yy". This should work around 10 times. The
overlay should be background-color: #000; opacity: 0.6; color: #fff.

~~~
pilif
In order to get an accurate prediction whether the presentation is going to
work or not, the key must be valid for decrypting the whole movie. If it is,
then it can provide no more piracy protection because then you would use it to
decrypt the movie independently of the projection system.

If the key is only good to decrypt a random part of the movie, then the test
says nothing about the success or failure of the key to decrypt the rest of
the movie.

Tangentially related: what is to stop a technically inclined projectionist to
use the key during the time it is valid to decrypt the movie?

I would assume that at presentation time, there is enough of decryption key
material available to the projection system to cover all of the movie,
otherwise a presentation would have to be interrupted as the cinemas internet
goes down.

~~~
wtracy
That actually happens: Screenings have been interrupted because the internet
connection to the projector gets cut. :-/

~~~
__david__
That makes no sense. The KDM is a self contained public-key encrypted message
containing the decryption keys. It requires no internet connection to verify
and extract the keys, and it certainly doesn't need to do it _during_ the
movie. In fact, most projectors are not even connected directly to the
internet.

~~~
xentronium
How do you make sure that system date was not tampered with then?

~~~
__david__
I cant remember how that works but I suspect the RTC is in the FIPS can and
that it takes effort to set it. They wouldn't go to all that effort to put
times in the KDM if someone could just bypass it by setting the system date.
It's a pretty well thought out system.

~~~
Thlom
Correct. The DCI says the secure clock only can be adjusted 6 min per year,
20-30 min with a code/package from the manufactorer. If it's adjusted over
this limit the mediablock will have to be changed.

------
drawkbox
Actually this is a better situation than getting a bad reel or worse not
receiving the movie at all the day or two before release on film.

I used to manage a theatre and sometimes had issues (more often re-releases
than new releases) for instance our copy of Pulp Fiction was missing a reel,
had to wait days for another one to ship rather than just making a call.
Sometimes movies came reeled backwards, missing reels, missing entire
canisters with multiple reels, scratched reels etc. Digital removes all those
distribution problems (and that is some heavy material). And not to mention
the times when a platter would break and drop the entire film on the ground
every now and again. I'd say digital has less problems.

I did have fun building movies on Thursday nights and watching them for
quality but digital is much better in terms of distribution. The reel feeling
will be missed though.

------
SoftwareMaven
Hollywood's lack of trust in _anybody_ will be the doom of the cinema, so they
need to tread carefully here. If going to the cinema (differentiating that
from the megaplex) means crap like this, the cinema will die. When enthusiasts
are pushed away, the lifeblood dies.

If your fervent supporters lose faith, you are in trouble.

------
JackC
This was the important part for me:

 _What I’d really like to leave you with here is the essence of how last night
made us feel: the industry is shifting – not only its medium, not only its
focus, but with it – and most significantly for theatres like us – it’s
shifting the element of control. We’re in relationship with you, our audience,
but it seems to me as though someone is trying to break us up._

So much of the problem with DRM, and the weirdness of copyright-based business
models, is not logistic ("I want to watch the Matrix in HD _now_!") but
aesthetic, artistic, moral: it _feels wrong_ on a basic human level to thread
your engagement with the culture through a maze of technical, legal,
bureaucratic obeisance.

I've decided, personally, to do my best not to violate IP laws, because I
don't want the moral hazard of arguing against a law while financially
benefiting from violating it. I want my vision clear. But I can say with clear
vision that there's something inhuman and anti-human about the scenario
described in the article, and I hope we find a better way.

------
rmc
I hate DRM and hope it dies, but I can't support the authors love of physical
films. It strikes me as too much like hipster luddistism, and failing to see
the disadvantages of physical reels.

Remember this cinema is in Melbourne, Australia. Australians (like the rest of
the non-US world) are sick of delays in films being released. Piracy has done
a bit to help get rid of the stupid regional delays (Matrix №2 was released
_at the same time_ globally). Digital film distribution would do wonders to
help the Aussie cinema industry!

------
beloch
On the one hand, digital distribution has many advantages over film
distribution, but I can't help but feel it's being rushed when it's not quite
ready.

DRM muck-ups like this are, of course a problem. However, the quality of the
product isn't up to snuff yet either. e.g. Digital IMAX is _terrible_. The
whole point of the IMAX format is to project a massive image with incredible
detail. It's supposed to feel more real because so much of your peripheral
vision is engaged while you're still able to focus in on one spot and see very
fine detail. Digital IMAX gets the size right, but the detail is lacking. In
every digital IMAX theater I've been in I was able to see individual pixels on
the screen. This of course, leads to all sorts of digital artifacts like
shimmering (especially noticeable during credit crawls).

IMax film is still breath-taking and superior to anything digital. I hope it
sticks around in at least some theaters until digital IMAX gets its act
together. I also hope to see some of the great 70mm classics (e.g. Lawrence of
Arabia) on film before it's too late.

------
cdooh
All that just to ensure a film doesn't get copied and pirated...and yet it
still does

~~~
megablast
Nope, as it says in the article, it is also to track how much the film is
being played, to ensure that they are being paid correctly.

~~~
abruzzi
The odd thing though is that (at least in the US) film payments are based on a
percentage of ticket sales, not number of showings. I used to work at a
repertoire theater, and we added late night showings at the last minute on
sever occasions based on audience demand.

------
ropers
> the industry is shifting – not only its medium, not only its focus, but with
> it – and most significantly for theatres like us – it’s shifting the element
> of control

That's a bingo. Like with so many things DRM, where rights are no longer
balanced and only the concerns of one side, the DRM-issuing side are ever
taken into account, this is a power-grab.

------
sparknlaunch
Totally interesting insight into the cinema world. My only questions is why
they waited so late to test if the film would play? (I am sure there is a
technical reason.)

~~~
lambada
FTA: "The KDM unlocks the content of the file and allows the cinema to play
the film. It is time sensitive and often is only valid from around 10 minutes
prior to the screening ..." Without the KDM being unlocked they can't test it,
so the earliest opportunity is 10 minutes before the screening.

------
tantalor
The story links to an "https" URL, which is odd for several reasons,

1\. Since when does a blog need to be secure?

2\. The certificate is issued to "*.wordpress.com", which is useless. Each
subdomain under wordpress.com should have a distinct certificate since they
have a distinct author. The certificate should be specific to the author, not
the host.

\- I realize it is not realistic to assign unique IP addresses to each
wordpress.com subdomain. I just don't like it.

3\. The page loads insecure content from gravatar.com and googleservices.com,
which throws up annoying errors.

~~~
ajross
Certificates don't go with "authors", they go with domains. They are only (!)
a promise that some grown up at a cert factory decided that the admin of the
host you are connecting to was the proper owner of that domain.

Now sure, there might be value in having per-subdomain certs in wordpress
(though that would be rather complicated for wordpress to administer). But
there's nothing wrong with that wildcard cert -- it provides proof that you've
reached a blog hosted at wordpress, and not a MitM ready to lift your account
password when you try to leave a comment.

