Movie Theaters Thwarting Pirates With IR Light?

An easier way to think of it is this:

Look at the sun. The muscles in your eye automatically contract to protect your vision.

Now, looking at an IR light doesn't work that way. You're still getting 100% of the intensity of the light, but you don't FEEL or SEE anything. Hence, your eyes don't contract and you get the full force of 100% of the light damaging your retina.
 
I'm actually working on a similar project, but what these people describe simply won't work. How do I know? Obviously it was the first thing I thought about when I had the idea.

The problem?

Namely, it will cause blindness. In order to work, they are going to be using 904nm lights. If you go to 840nm or below it will be bordering on visible light. Since the eye cannot detect 904nm or above light, the eye cannot contract to filter it out.

Low amounts of it, like remotes, are fine. But 2 hours of staring into IR lights strong enough to punch through the visible light being projected on the screen will slowly cause the eye's internal structures to heat up and burn your eyes. You won't even feel a thing - and at first, you won't notice anything either (it manifests itself in blind spots that your brain filters out and corrects). Until you notice that things like entire cars are popping in and out of your field of vision.

what about a quick 2 seconds pulse every other minute or so? That'd be enough to disrupt the movie on the camera, but would it save people's retinas?
 
what about a quick 2 seconds pulse every other minute or so? That'd be enough to disrupt the movie on the camera, but would it save people's retinas?

Can't answer that without knowing the specifics of the lights they are using.
 
As an added bonus you could now use the Wii on the big screen.
 
And 10 years from now we'll see:

"News Update - IR light found to cause retina damage at high intensities".

and

"Class Action Law Suit filed on behalf of patients with severe eye damage"

I say this because these sorts of things never seem to be really fully tested or thought out.
 
And 10 years from now we'll see:

"News Update - IR light found to cause retina damage at high intensities".

and

"Class Action Law Suit filed on behalf of patients with severe eye damage"

I say this because these sorts of things never seem to be really fully tested or thought out.

Even if it is tested, if you go to the theater enough you've probably noticed a glitch here and there. Things don't always go as planned right now with the picture/sound. Now imagine your local theater having to check and maintain a system that if it malfunctioned could blind the entire audience in the theater.

The amount in damages (and rightly so) from 1 incident could easily bankrupt pretty much any of our theater chains.
 
Cam movies are already being done in HD, most people who get crap quality cams dont get good sources, it is that simple.

Also, they would not release theather movies at the same time on netflix , or PVR cause then the theaters would make no money. what they DO need to do is release the movie on the same day worldwide, not hours, weeks, days apart.
 
Cam movies are already being done in HD, most people who get crap quality cams dont get good sources, it is that simple.

Also, they would not release theather movies at the same time on netflix , or PVR cause then the theaters would make no money. what they DO need to do is release the movie on the same day worldwide, not hours, weeks, days apart.

Theaters make no money anyway. Tickets sales go to the film companies and overhead. Concessions pays for staff.
 
Are you serious? Did you even read it?

Wow.... some people..

Yes. I know this is in Japan, but its only a matter of time before its snuck into theaters here. I also read the link Ualdayan posted, and what he put in bold. I also know what people at the movie theater get paid. This spells disaster for my eyesight, and I'm not going to have it. As I said before, I'm already damn near legally blind. When you want to foot the bill for corrective surgery for me, I'll happily sit in front row right next to you.
 
If it's of low enough intensity that constant viewing will not damage viewer's retina, then a simple Hot Mirror will filter the IR out easily.
If it's periodic high intensity pulses, you simply need to record the movie twice and swap out the affected frames.

But the idea is pretty much moot anyway. Most cam rips come from slipping the staff a few hundred of the local currency and setting up your HD camera in the projection booth, with easy access to the audio track for Telesync. When you have access to an empty cinema, simply turning off the IR lights behind the screen is trivial.
 
Instead of investing all this money in films, why not just make movies more affordable?

Not everyone has the cash to see a movie that is $15/person.
 
This is a great idea, though it makes me wonder whether it will lead to the development of IR filters or non-IR detecting CCDs.

There are already photographic IR filters out there. I wonder how effective they would be against what are being used in the theaters.
 
I totally had a discussion about using this technique a long time ago, here on HardForum ! Yay.. I win by thinking the concept way before hand :D
 
Just release the movies simultaneously at the theater on cable/satellite and DVD/Blu-ray the same day.

Great idea. Kill off a major distribution network in theatre and hotels, and lose the $6-7 per customer. Let's put movie houses out of business AND put the movie on an easy to duplicate format.
 
Great idea. Kill off a major distribution network in theatre and hotels, and lose the $6-7 per customer. Let's put movie houses out of business AND put the movie on an easy to duplicate format.

Agreed, best time to get a movie over torrent is around the time its released on Blu-ray/DVD. Before then, everything is handy cam, unless the reals were stolen like with The Matrix (annoying floating Z).
 
Agreed, best time to get a movie over torrent is around the time its released on Blu-ray/DVD. Before then, everything is handy cam, unless the reals were stolen like with The Matrix (annoying floating Z).

Pirates normally get their hands on the Blu-ray and DVD about a month before they are officially released. Not sure how they do it, but they gotz the connections.
 
Theaters are already bathed in low levels of IR for the most part. Assistive listening devices such as the headsets for those with poor hearing get their audio source by IR. The headbands have a nub on top which is the IR sensor. I discovered this after trying to find a more comfortable way to wear them, thought about having the top part of the headband down behind my neck and pinning it in place with the seat. No sound. Looked at the nub in brighter light after the movie was done... transparent dark purple cover, basically an IR optical filter.

Sound quality on those things tend to completely suck anyway. I much preferred the RF versions but haven't seen those in ages. The headsets were nice to have in case you ended up in a theater with a lot of loud people who had a tendency to yell at the screen.

Majority of the telecines I've seen aren't even from the US. Friend of mine gave me a copy of Harry Potter/Prince and the audio was in English, but occasional subtitles (and the title name) were popping up in Spanish. The industry really just needs to stop wasting so much money on brown dots to identify reels (that are distracting no matter how much they want us to believe that we won't notice it), et al... they'd see an increase in their margins by doing nothing. Imagine that.
 
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