It's become harder to get clean(ish) audio captures for theater films, but it's not impossible. There are still theaters with hearing impaired seating and headphone hookups, still a few drive-in theaters that broadcast via FM (one of those here in Reno, actually).

If anything, I think it's because digital rips/DLs seem to come out more quickly. By the time a group has tracked down a clean audio stream and takes the time to sync it with footage, someone's probably snagged a digital copy and released it.

Now Telecines, those are basically unseen these days. Almost no theaters still use actual film, and the few that do are way more careful about their inventory management. Gone are the days when a whole film can just get "misplaced" for a few days while someone with a Telecine setup copies it, to say nothing of how few people have the setup for Telecine anymore in the first place.

[–] parody@lemmings.world 17 points 2 months ago

Might have to make a new post about this:

How are there still cams if there’s been anti-piracy watermarks reported on since at least 2006?

Maybe the pirates never hit the same theater twice in a row… travel to different cities… only record at any given theater once every few years… then you’d need resources to catch somebody I’d guess.

I expect not all theaters can afford to send guys in with night vision goggles:

Maybe that’s outdated now since they can just throw up IR cameras:

Corrupt theater manager or shifty projectionist: no camera/security concerns, but still watermark concerns

Regular theatergoer: both camera/security concerns AND watermark concerns

Gutsy pirates out there!

[–] parody@lemmings.world 11 points 2 months ago

This is the exact kind of thing I was hoping someone would chime in with. Thanks for the interesting info!