Even with all of this onerous encryption and DRM, it's not hard to find pirated copies of movies. It makes me think that the sacrifice in ownership rights for the theaters over their equipment isn't worth it.
replies(7):
Piracy is inevitable, but in this case their model is much more robust that I would have predicted.
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.
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.