I’ve seen a few throughout my life at friend’s houses as a kid during the age of Limewire. Typically they were pretty good quality even though you’d see the odd person get up from their seat or hardcoded subtitles. Lately I’ve been curious about the history behind them and how they came to be.
Have there been well known release groups similar to the game cracking scene?
Have they always been mostly from one region?
Are they released strategically for one reason or another?
Have there been hidden methods to bust groups after a release such as steganography?
I’d be down to hear any facts about it you find interesting, stories, and if you have any articles or videos about the subject.
I was a projectionist years ago and it would have been very easy to cam rip films on “print build nights.” Was always a Wednesday, we’d all come in late and built the reels into full prints for our big horizontal platter projectors. We’d all then separate off and watch the movies after the theater closed to note any defects or other issues before those movies launched that week.
If a film was DTS audio (the film had a time code and that would sync with CD audio tracks), you could have even run a sound recorder to the headphone jack on the DTS tower that handles the audio for those prints.