Hindi
Real Image’s technology to track piracy in cinema
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.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
