From the article:
When we went to our seats, the wait staff let us know that despite the fact that the previews were playing, we wouldn’t know until the movie actually started whether we could see the film or not. If it didn’t work, the screen would just turn black. Luckily, the film went through without a hitch.
The marvels of intellectual property
Remember when they started infecting people’s computers with rootkits?
I’ve avoided Sony products as best I can since then. I’m probably not aware of the full suite of Sony-owned brands and companies, but rootkit made it so I haven’t had a piece of Sony branded merchandise in almost 20 years.
Same here! It’s absolutely bonkers to me that everyone was just OK with that.
Hilariously enough, even at the theater, you’d get a better experience pirating the movie. Y’know, cause you’d ACTUALLY GET TO WATCH THE MOVIE AT ALL. Proving yet again piracy is a service problem.
capitalist efficiency at its very best
Death to America
Sony is a Japanese corporation
Japan is an American corporation
You joke, but Japan hasn’t even been allowed to have their own military since WWII. They barely are a separate nation.
That’s 2Password2Remember, they sign off every comment that way. It’s surprisingly relevant a lot of the time, though: America has had an almost unrivaled hand in shaping the economic landscape of Japan, from the San Francisco Treaty to the Plaza Accords
“Death to America” is like our version of “and peace be with you.” It’s a nice phrase to say at the end of every statement.
Death to America to you as well
1st Jan? Smells like an expired certificate somewhere in whatever chain of DRM bullshit they use.
Most likely
these are already thin profit margins, and its incredibly event-sensitive, like holidays. this sounds financially painful
So, like usual, DRM only fucked the people trying to play by the rules.
Made even worse by Sony, the manufacturer, completely exiting that market. I wonder if/how Sony will fix this, are there even staff on hand there with the technical details for their projector’s DRM anymore?
It speaks volumes about how silly DRM is when a massive game publisher like TakeTwo/Rockstar resorts to selling a pirated version of their own game 🤦♂️
The next time this happens those projectors may end up being $20000 bricks, and I’m not too sure how many independents will be able to afford dumping a quarter of a million to replace all their projector screens
I worked as a projectionist in 2009 when the cinema got its first digital projector in order to be able to show Avatar in 3D. At the start of the movie no one actually knew if it would work. Due to the movie being encrypted - with every cinema in Germany waiting eagerly for the password - No cinema was able to play the movie. But everywhere cinemas were packed with people. Because of fuckups somewhere in this incredibly stupid system the movie was delayed about half an hour (IIRC) nationwide. With no-one knowing if it would eventually work - especially nice for the people working at the cinema having to deal with angry audience members.
At the same time the 2D 35mm film-version we also had started without any problems (it was massive and pretty dicey to carry it around).
I also assume it’s an expired certificate.
See, this is what happens when certificates are not renewed automatically.
The article says the projectos are discontinued. That’s probably the reason no one is monitoring these certs.
Another glorious benefit of DRM.
Pay attention boys and girls, this is also what they want to do with over the air broadcasts with the ATSC 3.0 format.
“Sony is having trouble with their projectors”
Why not call it out for the bullshit that it is? “Sorry, but greedy bullshit capitalism has failed you as a customer. The lockouts they’ve put on their media to punish the honest users is doing its job once again to punish you. We sure hope this doesn’t lead you to find alternative ways to enjoy media without all of the DRM lockouts and garbage to punish you.”
Because if they wrote that down then they would never be able to put on another Sony movie ever again. They would be out of business in short order.
Oh dear… So anyway lol
Because I saw accounts elsewhere that Sony is only providing parts and support for these projectors now, and Alamo is changing vendors. They half assed it, not Sony.
These are all accounts I saw on The Verge and I cannot independently verify them.
So Sony sold them projectors, locked down their media, and then forces theatres to buy new projectors every x number of years to keep up with DRM? Sounds like a lot of unnecessary waste…
Good news! Sony has exited the business, and its basically Alamo’s fault they didn’t move faster on their vendor change.
These are all accounts I saw on The Verge and I cannot independently verify them.
I know these are issues with any tech but the amount of expertise and culture around 70mm film at least guarantees its continued adoption for some.
Ah, so “Company provided service, but then ditched it and now theatres are left to buy more expensive (and likely locked down) hardware in hopes the next company doesn’t pull the rug on them again”
watch a literal half hour of ads and then maybe, if you’re very lucky, you get to watch the movie you paid for.
Why show up on time? Most theaters have assigned seats now. Just show up 20 minutes after start time.
If only there was a technology that allowed theaters to play movies in an analogue manner that they were in 100% control of. That would be cool. Why hasn’t that ever been invented?
Nothing wrong with digital, just the drm part that sucks
And the fact that your access can vanish for no reason at any time.
Also… internet crash. That’s going to be fun for folks.
Yeah, and freighting, protecting and maintaining 30mm films in cans is a pain.
There are lots of things that can go wrong with film.
Yes — but local projectionists maintain the ability to restore the ability to present the films.
When corporations are in charge of everything, humanity is a powerless minion holding its icky tiny gruel filled bowl and whining, “please, sir, May I have some more.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sony is having issues with their projectors that is preventing us from being able to project movies at some of our theaters today.”
As New Year’s Day is a holiday, we somewhat understandably haven’t yet been able to reach Alamo or Sony spokespeople, and not every theater or every screening was affected.
That didn’t stop Alamo from blaming its Sony projectors for what at least one theater called a “nationwide” outage, however.
“Due to nation-wide technical difficulties with Sony, we aren’t able to play any titles today,” read part of a taped paper sign hanging inside a Woodbury, Minnesota location.
I’ve seen speculation on Reddit that it may have something to do with expired digital certificates used to unlock encrypted films, but we haven’t heard that from Alamo or Sony.
Sony reportedly exited the digital cinema projector business in 2020; all of the company’s existing models are listed as discontinued.
The original article contains 257 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 42%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Is there any reasonable level of IP protection/DRM which may be employed by movie studios?
Should all films have simultaneous worldwide cross-platform releases, never theater only? If not, it seems some kind of defenses on the high-quality digital files for theaters would be a rare case where DRM seems somewhat justifiable… assuming it’s robust (beyond mergers/closures of the provider), and consumers never have to think about it.
Would love to hear arguments both for and against any protection schemes for any film ever.
The way we murder DRM is by it affecting the business bottom line.
This might be an offense worthy of litigation if Sony is not sufficiently contrite.
It’s telling how unfriendly the DRM is, that it doesn’t inform the protectionist of problems until the minute the show starts.
Sony is a real dick.
DRM only affects paying customers. It plays no role in effectively combatting piracy.
Only good service and good pricing is effective against piracy.
While I completely agree with you based on the data, DRM is absolutely sold to publishers on the pretense that it combats piracy, at least with keeping paying customers from engaging with media in ways the publishers don’t like (such as lending content or selling that content used in a secondary market).
And yes, the more draconian their restrictions, the more they drive people to resources that provide cracked or DRM-free content. That said, Sony is notorious for going to extreme lengths to severely limit use of their content outside narrow consumption, often with obligatory ad-viewing, driving people to either piracy, or avoiding Sony content at all.
At one point, I might have been interested in playing Horizon Zero Dawn and went from buying it, to getting a refund to thinking about pirating it to eventually deciding I cannot be bothered. But then I steer clear of most AAA game companies, now.
This is without a doubt the dumbest timeline
What happened to this little new invention called filmreels?
I work at a movie theater and while we don’t use Sony projectors, we were told to check all of our certificates to prevent this from happening. This sounds like a communication issue to me. Someone didn’t do their job in time. Also in the article it says they wouldn’t know if the film would work until it actually played. If that is either an outright lie or the equipment is designed horribly. On the projectors we use which are going on a decade old, the playlist won’t even start if it can’t verify that all of the content is playable and unlocked. We can see when our certificates expire as well so if all of these certificates expired at the beginning of the year. The theater should have already caught that and had the certificates reissued. Keeping in mind that this wasn’t some sort of bug or glitch that nobody could have predicted, then disregard everything I said. DRM on movie theater. Projectors is an industry standard and all companies use it, not just Sony. Until the actual reason comes out, it’s hard to say. If it’s the certificates of the projectors themselves and not the movie keys which are two different things then yeah I could see how nobody knew what was going on. Especially if the projectors are discontinued. I do know that if our servers lose power and the CMOS battery goes dead, they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Not familiar with cinema projectors, but as I have gatherered from this forum problem is caused by KDM (used to decrypt movie) provider / reseller called Deluxe. Neither Sony or this cinema chain is at fault and problem indeed seems worldwide.
I do know that if our servers lose power and the CMOS battery goes dead, they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Find it very hard to believe to be honest. Could this be simply some rumour from colleagues? Doubt any vendor would implement anything like this, drives could be simply encrypted to protect data if they ever get stolen.
I’ve gotten bad keys from the studio before, usually when we were doing advanced screenings. It was a relatively quick fix… I think the longest delay was ~15 minutes. I never had to cancel a show because of it, certainly didn’t have to close the entire building.
For as much as I loved the convenience of digital, I really miss the days of 35 film.
35mm was a whole thing and while I miss the nostalgia, I certainly don’t miss the upkeep and the problems with film. Digital is so much easier. I feel the biggest issue with digital is if a problem goes wrong, there’s really not much you can do outside of standard problem fixes. If it’s an internal issue. You’re just screwed until the technician can fix it.
or the equipment os designed horribly
I find this entirely believable. There’s a LOT of equipment out there designed for profit over user experience.
But you’re right, it’s not really worth speculating over.
Sir, I must ask - what are the chances that emplpyee might steal a movie? Or is it not possible because of DRM?
I guess if someone really wanted to they could even with the DRM but the DRM just makes it more difficult.
Not a cinema guy, but assuming those movies are encrypted with modern standards, it is practically impossible if you simply would steal the media. Could be done if you could tap into the original playback device where movie plays and pull decrypted copy out of it.
Edit: As per this AES 128 is used so good luck if you ever stumble upon an encrypted copy.
Curious about something, maybe you know since you work at a theater. I seem to remember hearing that a theater has to pay royalties each time they show a movie and that newer technology can track and report this automatically. Does the latest technology automatically track this as I recall? And if so, would playing a movie as a test count as a showing?
While this certainly may be possible, I don’t think it’s tracked to that degree. Theaters pay to lease a film and the studio decides if there are special rules for being shown. Some smaller known movies have deals with the theaters to show the film at a very low cost in order to get people to watch it. On the first weekend most of the ticket profit goes to the studios and then every week the profit to the studios gets lower and the theaters get more of that money depending on what was agreed on. Some movies like the Taylor Swift concert film could only be shown after 12:00 p.m. and only Thursday through Sunday for example. Say there was a busy night and we sold out of a show, we could cancel a different show and play that sold out movie in another auditorium to fit more people in. This is fine for most studios except for Disney, if Disney finds out that you cancel one of their films to show a different film, they will not be happy. As far as I know we can show movies and definitely as long as we have the keys active for them and I don’t think the specific amount of time is reported back to the studios, we are just required to play it a minimum amount of times.
Don’t fuck with the mouse?
I do know that if our servers lose power in the CMOS battery is dead and then they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Holy shit, DRM needs to fuck off and die.
