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What you see and hear inside this darkened theater doesn't seem out of the ordinary: A seated audience of reporters, Hollywood studio executives and Motion Picture Association of America representatives is watching a movie projected on a large screen.
What you can't see or hear -- with unaided eyes or ears -- are the new anti-piracy technologies at work. This theater is in fact a movie tech lab -- the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center. And here, representatives of Trakstar, a Florida-based tech firm, are demonstrating what they claim is a solution to in-theater movie bootlegging
The company's anti-piracy offering comprises two technologies. The first, PirateEye, detects camcorders and pinhole cameras in the act of bootlegging movies, according to Trakstar. The remote-controlled device looks like a mechanical replica of Darth Vader's head. Perched on a stand directly below the movie screen at the front of the theater, the small black box shoots brief, almost invisible pulses of light at the audience.
Offending camera lenses bounce back a telltale reflection that the device senses, then records on a digital snapshot captured with a built-in digital camera of its own. If the machine spots a suspected pirating camcorder in the audience, it then sends out an automated alarm to in-theater security or law enforcement.
What you can't see or hear -- with unaided eyes or ears -- are the new anti-piracy technologies at work. This theater is in fact a movie tech lab -- the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center. And here, representatives of Trakstar, a Florida-based tech firm, are demonstrating what they claim is a solution to in-theater movie bootlegging
The company's anti-piracy offering comprises two technologies. The first, PirateEye, detects camcorders and pinhole cameras in the act of bootlegging movies, according to Trakstar. The remote-controlled device looks like a mechanical replica of Darth Vader's head. Perched on a stand directly below the movie screen at the front of the theater, the small black box shoots brief, almost invisible pulses of light at the audience.
Offending camera lenses bounce back a telltale reflection that the device senses, then records on a digital snapshot captured with a built-in digital camera of its own. If the machine spots a suspected pirating camcorder in the audience, it then sends out an automated alarm to in-theater security or law enforcement.
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