BANGALORE: Real Image Media Technologies (RIMT), a developer and provider of Digital Media Technology in the film, video and audio domain, has announced that all cinemas equipped with its Qube Digital Cinema System within the country were being enhanced to include the highest level of anti-piracy measures.

Utilising security concepts and solutions designed by the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a body formed by the major Hollywood Studios for the D-Cinema market, Real Image has improved the capabilities of its Qube Cinema system to even serve the non-Hollywood E-Cinema market.

Qube E-Cinema systems are already installed and functioning in over 500 screens across India. The companies which have adopted the system includes E-City, Pyramid Saimira, Cinemeta Entertainment, Shree Venkatesh Films among others.

The security improvements are in two key areas.The first improvement is in Qube's E-Cinema security through incorporation of Thomson's NexGuard Forensic Watermarking (FWM). The advanced system incorporates the serial number of the Qube E-Cinema system into the image in a totally invisible manner.

In the present system, secret but visible marks are being incorporated into the film prints by producers, as well as RIMT and other digital cinema players in the country. The marks have the major disadvantage of being visible and therefore easy for a pirate to identify and cover up in various ways.

A release claims that Thomson's FWM technology places totally invisible marks on the image which can be identified using Thomson's detection system from any pirated copy that is found as a Video CD, DVD or Internet download. These marks will survive compression of the image into a Video CD, DVD and many forms of Internet download says the release.

The second enhancement is in the concept of the Trusted Device List which allows only specific authorized devices to be used for projection. The output of all Qube E-Cinema servers is already encrypted using the HDCP (High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) standard, and this serves as a basic form of protection. However, it is still possible to use a HDCP compatible monitor rather than a HDCP projector to screen the feature film and copy it in high quality by using a video camera. By utilising the concept of the Trusted Device List, the Qube server will now only output picture to a specific projector unit that is authorized. Thus, all other HDCP monitors and any future illegal HDCP decoders will not function with the upgraded Qube system, claims the release.