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thewayneAlamo suffered outages at four theaters, two in the NYC area, plus Denver and San Francisco They blamed Sony projectors, which is curious as Sony exited the movie theater projector business in 2020: you'd think that Alamo would have phased them out and replaced them since they would have represented a severe service liability if they were to break.
At any rate, the problem seemed to be computer security/encryption certificates tied to the movies they were showing. Not all movies were affected. The distributor was scrambling to recreate certificates with longer expiration dates and - however they go about it - 'reprint' and re-issue the movies to the theaters.
The movies are shipped as encrypted files, then the certificates are needed to decrypt them. The certificate ties into the projector so the file decrypts as it is being played. DVDs and Bluray players do the same things, that's why you sometimes need to do an update to your Bluray player to play the latest titles: certificates have been updated and your old certs won't decrypt the newest stuff.
Apparently all was well on New Year's Day.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector
At any rate, the problem seemed to be computer security/encryption certificates tied to the movies they were showing. Not all movies were affected. The distributor was scrambling to recreate certificates with longer expiration dates and - however they go about it - 'reprint' and re-issue the movies to the theaters.
The movies are shipped as encrypted files, then the certificates are needed to decrypt them. The certificate ties into the projector so the file decrypts as it is being played. DVDs and Bluray players do the same things, that's why you sometimes need to do an update to your Bluray player to play the latest titles: certificates have been updated and your old certs won't decrypt the newest stuff.
Apparently all was well on New Year's Day.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector
no subject
Date: 2024-01-04 03:39 pm (UTC)There's a very funny movie by Joe Dante called Amazon Women on the Moon. It's a collection of shorts with a couple of recurring themes. One of the shorts is called, IIRC, Video Pirates. And it's swashbuckling 18th century pirates who capture another sailing ship loaded with the latest video releases. They pop a VHS tape into a player (it's an old movie now) and the FBI warning comes up and the pirate captain goes "Oooh! I'm so scared!" with some very nice quavery voice acting, and the crew erupts in laughter. This movie had some amazing talent and clever stuff in it.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-04 06:07 pm (UTC)