Shoutbox

PirateEye detects concealed video cams in movie theaters

By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor

November 10, 2004 - 16:38 EST

Los Angeles (CA) - A Florida firm claims to have found a solution for the movie industry to prevent bootlegging in theaters. Trakstar demonstrated its Pirate Eye technology, which uses light impulses to detect video recording devices and TVS, a sophisticated audio watermarking system.

In Howard Gladstone's view, the end of in-theater piracy is just a matter of time. Gladstone, president of Trakstar, demonstrated a rather creepy sounding technology apology this week in Hollywood in front of an audience mixed of movie industry representatives and journalists. His "PirateEye" monitoring system is able to reliably detect recording devices which can be used for bootlegging. This includes video cameras but also cell phones with video recording capabilities.

"PirateEye scans a complete theater room three times during a presentation," he said. The device is remote controlled and uses light impulses to find recording devices, including pinhole camcorders. According to Gladstone, the audience does not notice the scanning progress. "The impulses are only 20 ms in length. Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms to recognize the light source. And the head normally will turn after 200 ms."

A second part to Trakstar's anti-piracy solution is TVS which implements watermarks in audio signals. These watermarks are recorded in bootlegs and easily can be retrieved again, when pirated content is offered for download on the Internet or file-sharing services. "We are able to extract the data even after multiple analog re-conversions and copies. This allows us to determine where and at which time the copy originally was created."

Expectedly, there is "great interest" for the technology from the movie industry, according to Gladstone. Currently, several large firms evaluate his proposals, he said.

However, there was no decision yet, if and which technology could be used. So far, a reasonable business model has not been determined and there is no agreement on who should pick up the cost of the technology implementation. Gladstone however believes that his system would be ready for installation by mid of 2005, if the movie industry chooses to use his technology.