How encryption for Cinema Movies works

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.

There are no high quality pirated versions though. The streaming version and even blu-ray is compressed way heavier than these DCP files. I’d buy these cinema versions of films in a heartbeat if they were availble.

1080p/4k as encoded by the streaming sites / blu-ray is sufficiently high quality for virtually all of the viewing public. You're weird (no offense).

There is nothing weird about it. If a single person has the resource to decrypt and manage the logistics, then obviously DCP is the intended way a director wants his audience to experience his creativity.

I do not think that's weird.

A 4k movie, even from a Blu-Ray, may look very nice when watched at a normal speed, but if you look at the individual frames in order to distinguish some details during a sequence with fast movements, the quality is very bad and it may be impossible to see the details that you want to see.

At the levels of compression that are typical for movies distributed by encoding with H.264, H.265 and the like, I have never seen any movie that still looks high quality when slowed down during fast action.

Where do you live? Where I live only professionals and nerds use movie playback that allows single frame stepping, it's definitely a fringe phenomenon here.

I’ve worked in film mastering so yes I am an outlier. My point was that industry guarding the DCP makes sense as the leaked pirate versions are not the same thing. In music world everyone can buy uncompressed CD, but with moving image end user can only get what is equivalent of a mp3. This includes the illegal channels. Blu-ray is say 1:40 compressed from raw data. Good enough for sure but not the theatre experience.

I live in the EU, but any good free movie player should allow stepping through video frames back and forth and also playing with any desired speed in frames per second.

This is not a feature that requires professional tools.

And I do not think that you have to be a pro or a nerd in order to want to see clearly many of the details of the kind "blink and you miss it".

As someone who's been working with cinema and video mastering, it sounds like you haven't seen the difference between professional formats like DCP and consumer formats viewed on a proper screen or projector. There's a reason we still have cinemas after all.

Even consumer equipment benefits greatly from visually lossless encoded media.

No one goes to the theater because the picture is better. It often isn’t.

Projectors aren’t maintained, or set up correctly, and audio balancing is often way off. People go to the movies to see new releases or have dedicated shared experiences

I am absolutely seeing mission impossible in theaters next month because their screens and speakers are better.

> But it seems that more and more releases are straight-to-streaming, and/or sometimes simultaneous with the theatrical release

If anything, it's less and less. Studios are pulling the PVOD date further and further out for successful titles generally (Universal excepted). All the talk from Cinemacon was going back to a 60 day+ exclusive theatrical window.

I often hear that hand waving "what the market wants". But it is more "what the market can suffer". See IPv4 vs IPv6.

I am not working with mastering as the OP. But I can see the low fidelity of streaming services. I watch my content projected to a large screen.

So I am one of those weirdos. I do not mind as I know I am a nerd. But there are more of us than you think but the penny pinchers wins as usual. "The majority do not see it". But they do. The majority went out and bought 4K TVs. They are slightly disappointed as it did not get "that much better". Most would have been just as happy with a 1080P OLED display. But only the geeks can articulate what they want.

The worst local offender is the online Blockbuster. Compression artifacts galore. But as most view content on phones the audio is stereo only. So your "sufficient" is not my "sufficient".

I get the "weird" part. No offense at all. But you are talking about optimizing for what the majority will suffer.

And it is done to save the last little penny. We could optimize for technical excellence but pride has gone out of fashion.

You are right and it is an evil form of gate keeping.

Pros before bros.

Nerds are just wannabes.

The mugglers may suffer as they do not know, care or can articulate it. If they do - they are clearly nerds and we can discard them as a minority.

People conflate pro with premium. The mass market should be able to sustain premium and discount. The market might be too small for pro DCP content. But I would like the market to understand that there are 3 important segments. Pro, premium and discount.

Pro - special specific needs. Premium - for the regular Joe who wants good quality. Discount - for the masses.

Premium market is underserved. Unless you are willing to pay luxury prices for Kaleidescape or the likes.

It is the race to the bottom with streaming providers testing commercials. They have already succeeded with the "junk content" as the big studios wants to keep licenses for their own services.

The quality bar is set for the lowest/cheapest common denominator.

> No one goes to the theater because the picture is better. It often isn’t.

> Projectors aren’t maintained, or set up correctly, and audio balancing is often way off.

This depends a lot on the cinema that you go to.

Even among the set of people who have something even semi-resembling a proper home theater—which is already a tiny group—I'd be 95+% would need to upgrade their gear quite a bit before they'd benefit at all much from quality higher than ~50GB-100GB blu ray rips.

(stream rips do often does look like dog shit, though—I find sub-10GB 1080p blu-ray downscales [to get the HDR from the 4k blu ray, but lower res and storage space] usually look better than raw 4K streaming rips)

Most people are watching at home, on smaller screens, and simply do not care about pixel perfection in every frame.

Most people just watch at normal speed. Single-steppers (myself among them) are, objectively, weird.

> I have never seen any movie that still looks high quality when slowed down during fast action.

Then don't do this? No one does this. Theaters certainly don't offer this experience.

That the tooling might be pervasive doesn't mean it gets any use outside of fringe groups.