So I went to see Grindhouse tonight. I enjoyed it.
Except for one thing, that shouldn’t be in the movie: The stupid anti-piracy dots.
During every single action sequence, they appeared right in the middle. If there was a scene where the was a single bright area, they appeared there.
That seriously destroys the movie for me. It really makes me want to not want to go to a theatre. I have a big screen HDTV and surround sound at home… I should probably just wait for it to hit DVD and not get constantly distracted by your stupid, intrusive and ultimately futile anti-piracy measures.
In all honesty, I don’t go see most movies in theatres because of it. Then I buy a used DVD.
So MPAA… I hope you all die in a fire. And take the RIAA with you too.
The point is that each print of the movie that goes out has a different pattern of dots, on different frames of the film. That way, if a pirate copy emerges on the internet or something, the studio can trace where the original pirating was done, and (i guess) either warn the theater or refuse to send the theater any more films.
I gota be honest; I’ve only noticed them twice. And neither time were they a big deal. For all the things to hate the MPAA for, this is the least of them.
I see the damn things too. Red, I’m colorblind, but I’ve got fast eye response. I can see my computer screen tearing or an old CRT flickering if it’s set at a low refresh rate. I can see individual frames of film with just enough accuracy that I can see each. And every. Freaking red dot. out there. Probably cause they’re different enough from the previous scenes that my eyes are drawn to them. Another reason I can’t go to movie theaters anymore.
I can see them, and they are a distraction. Maybe when people start going to the theatre owners in droves and complaining, then the system will be scrapped. Most likely, it’ll take something like the dots spelling out “nappy headed hos” in Braille before anything happens.
Back in the old days, there used to be flashes of stuff on the screen so that the projectionist could make sure the new reel was in sync with the old one. Same difference.
Now, being unable to make a legal personal copy of my legally purchased DVD, I could climb on board that rant.
Not constantly through the movie, though; more like two or three times, tops, and it was just a wee oval in the top right. Plus you could hardly complain - no oval, film no workee. Part of the atmosphere of film projection, if you ask me. Whereas having flaws deliberately injected into your paid experience on the assumption that you’re a criminal … not the same thing at all.
Same rant, different instance. Stupid ineffective “copy protection” measure inconveniences genuine users for no real benefit. Has it really stopped bootlegs getting out? Clearly not. Is it pissing people off? Apparently so. Same for both technologies. Stupid short-sighted foot-shooting. Humph.
These dots are bigger and not in the same place. I saw those, too. The burnt holes in the corner. These are one every 300 frames or so, (From article, I can not count frames) and in the middle of the picture, in a light area, so they can be noticed.
Not constantly AIUI, but more frequent than the cue marks, and in deliberately prominent positions. I’ve not seen them myself; can’t afford London cinema prices. There’s a brief explanation and example picture on Wikipedia (the second one, the Deluxe version, is what the OP saw).
It seems like the Deluxe version deliberately sticks the dots in noticeable places at several places during the movie, because if the dots are going to make it through the crappy back-of-the-cinema type encoding process, they’re going to have to be fairly strong. Have a poke on the forums at film-tech, where professional projectionists seem pretty hacked off with it. Some prints seem to be worse than others, too. They were complaining about Master & Commander, where they apparently popped up 7 times in the first major action scene. That’s more than a little obtrusive, by the sounds of it.
Last night we were at a friends’ house. Their 15 year old son was watching “300.” Another friend, a musician, mildly admonished him for watching a pirated movie. He said, “Hey, I paid to see it twice,” shrugged and continued watching it.
Nope. I dearly love my friend and her husband but we have issues with their parenting skills.
For instance, the same son spent 11 (yes, eleven) hours playing in a video game tournament yesterday and my friend worked his shift at the free pantry so he could play. :rolleyes:
I hope you don’t think I was saying it was your responsibility to do something, FTR. I was only commenting that the parents can teach, or at least try to teach, better morals with respect to things like that.
The kid sounds like his moral GPS is blinking “Please choose initialization location.”
Well, they do work. After this system first came in to use, a few locations were noted as to where the pirated copies came from. The MPAA then hired security people to patrol those places with night vision. Very few people are caught pirating films. Mostly because they don’t want an ugly scene in the theatre. A few of the video guys have been violent when approached. This isn’t broadcast to the public, as the theatre owners don’t people thinking they are sitting next to violent criminals when they go to the theatre.
After the security shows up the pirates move to other locations and the process starts all over again. There have been other benefits. It helps in mapping out the pirated DVD business. Seeing where it starts, and seeing the pirated DVDs for sale, in the US and abroad, it’s just filling in the middle bit that is really tough.
So the dots work. The dots alone are not meant to stop piracy but they do their job.