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I used to be in the R&D department for a large company that included a major movie studio. They wanted to develop a system that would find people filming the screen in theaters.

The system worked by exploiting the fact that all cameras at that time, including phone cameras, had a IR filter over the sensor that was a retro-reflector at IR wavelengths.

Behind the screen at three separated places were three IR sources and detector cameras.

If the detector cameras at the same points as the sources saw a bright dot from any two of the three locations that was coming back from the illuminator (the light was modulated so we could determine if it was ours) we knew we had a camera!

The system worked, but deployment in theaters never happened in a big way, other than a few theaters used for screenings in LA.




Pretty sure we worked at the same place. There's a commercial copy of that device now.


Yes we did! How have you been?


Wouldn’t that also pick someone up who had indiscreetly pull up their phone to check a text message?


If it's the kind of screening I've been to (e.g. Disney D23) then you are instructed not to take your phone out for any reason during the screening.


Probably, but a person trying to CAM a movie would have it out all the time, not just for a brief moment.




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