Cinea's SV510 USB key puts movie footage on lockdown

With movie studios sending around an increasing amount of digital footage before a film is even released, there are a growing number of opportunities for pirates to get their hands on that valuable content and do what pirates do best. We've already seen Dolby Laboratories subsidiary Cinea attempt to combat this problem by shipping secure DVDs and players to Academy Awards judges, and now the company has released a portable USB 2.0 video key called the SV510 that brings the same encryption technology to the dailies and rough cuts that need to be distributed throughout the filmmaking process. Once the desired footage has been encoded with Cinea's S-VIEW encryption and watermarking technique, it can be safely sent on a DVD or via the Internet to recipients with an authorized SV510, who must plug the device into their PCs and enter a six to twelve digit code if they wish to view the content. This system ensures that even if a laptop and SV510 are both lost/stolen together, the encrypted video cannot be viewed without a password; and for heightened security, any of the Cinea peripherals can be remotely de-authorized by the content creators. The Windows version of this product is available immediately for $600 -- a Mac edition will be shipping in October -- along with a "management fee" of $20/month for the life of the device.

[Via über gizmo]

[Kyle Kennedy @ Jul 23rd 2006 1:56PM]

Sounds like a complete waste - hook the computer up to a television, and use a DVD recorder to record the stream.

Voila.

[slyecho @ Jul 23rd 2006 2:14PM]

This is supposed to be used with "dailies and rough cuts that need to be distributed throughout the film-making process", so your DVD recorder won't be enough for this. Maybe an HD DVD or BluRay recorder will do.

[Svante @ Jul 23rd 2006 2:51PM]

To Kyle Kennedy

Wrong, cause this encrypts the footage itself, not the video signal. to even acess the DVD/whatever you need this.

[AndrewNeo @ Jul 23rd 2006 3:02PM]

The purpose of this isn't to keep the endpoint from watching/ripping the stream, it's to keep anyone in the middle who might steal or have their hands on it from doing anything with the video.

[Henry @ Jul 23rd 2006 3:08PM]

Yeah, but let's say I have it plugged into my computer, and am playing a protected movie, and have an RCA adapter from the video output of my computer and connected that to a camcorder or something and recorded it. Would that work?

[dextro @ Jul 23rd 2006 3:14PM]

As long as you can see it there will always be a way to copy it, same thing with music: as long as you can ear it you can copy it. It may just take a bit more time :P

[Bryan @ Jul 23rd 2006 3:50PM]

Of course this was going to happen and the question is will it ever be smoother than this? What is Apple's DRM for [HD] Movies going to be? Same as music videos and shorts? What movie studio wouldn't choose to protect something that should never be copied---the dailies?

[David @ Jul 23rd 2006 4:30PM]

There won't be HD movies from Apple any time soon beyond the trailers they already offer. Even at 480p (not really HD), we're talking 3GB or so per feature-length film, well beyond most consumers' patience and storage capacity. The new iTMS movie store will offer 320x240 rentals (and possibly downloads) and not much else, I think.

[Ed Sullivan @ Jul 23rd 2006 5:05PM]

Read up on CINEA before making your comments. Each CINEA enabled DVD is encrypted and forensically marked. If a video is ripped they will know exactly who it is from. Yes, the analog hole still exists, but the forensic marking will always be there.

Of the films that were released with CINEA technology during the last award screener season - none were ripped. As opposed to the multitude of films released sans CINEA that were immediately ripped.

[OPTICAL OUT PLEASE @ Jul 23rd 2006 5:16PM]

For each review DVD they send out they could just add a watermark image at the bottom of the frame with the name of the reviewer (or a code). It wouldnt drastically alter the movie and the reviewer could be easily identified and shot.

[Nogami @ Jul 23rd 2006 8:09PM]

It's an interesting idea, but a heck of a lot of people want to screen dailies on normal DVD players, and not specially equipped laptops with custom hardware.

Doing dailies on DVD is big business, and you sometimes run-off dozens of copies of a given reel. I can't see a whole lot of people spending the time encoding each one with special DRM and such.

The only place these would be useful is sending them for viewing in places where you don't really trust the receipient (and there's nothing like sending someone a DVD that's bascially a pre-packaged "I don't trust you, you stinking thief, but please check out the footage".)

[Arggg @ Jul 24th 2006 11:39AM]

Although this 'analogue hole' _could_ exist, we all seem to have forgotten to read the article carefully:

"This system ensures that even if a laptop and SV510 are both lost/stolen together, the encrypted video cannot be viewed without a password."

So, once you've stolen both the DVD and SV510, how do you get your password??

[usb hub @ Jul 29th 2006 8:39AM]

Seems like overkill. Surely there is an easier way.