05-31-2024, 06:13 PM
(05-31-2024, 08:52 AM)FlyingClayDisk Wrote: When I was working over in Malaysia I used to get a kick out of some of the movie theaters there. Generally speaking, movies released in the US would take on average about 2 years to show up in Malaysia, but there was always this one theater (just one) which would have the latest releases within a few days after they came out in the US. We always wondered why this was, so one time we went to check one of the movies out. The first thing I noticed was the audio quality didn't seem very good, but then after a few minutes of watching I was suddenly introduced to why...someone's head appeared from the bottom of the screen, and then a row of people stood up to make way for them to sit down! Yep, someone had recorded the movie on their phone or with a small video camera in Hong Kong or the States and sent it to the theater owners. What we were watching was a video taken of the movie screen elsewhere.
That always gave me a little chuckle. What made it even better was I'm sure some MPAA executive was probably eating Rolaids left and right over that kind of thing. Piracy was rampant there back then. People didn't even try to conceal it.
Another example which cracked me up was...I walked into a computer shop one day to buy a laptop. It didn't have an OS loaded on it, or any software. The guy asked me what OS I wanted (Microsoft). "No problem!", he said. He then turned around to about (8) identical PC's on the back wall behind him, and placed source discs in one drive and blank CD's in the other drive of each computer and, one by one, copied every piece of software I wanted onto the blank CD's, then hand wrote the license key on the disc sleeve. LOL! Cost? Less than $5 bucks total for my Windows OS, the entire MS Office suite, AutoCAD, and several other fairly expensive applications. What a hoot; I had to chuckle at that!
I still get the occasional head in the picture and bad audio on some of the first run movies I watch at home. Asia to include India are masters at that kind of stuff.. People without internet still go to movie theaters around here but the stand alone theaters seem to be a dying breed so they are almost always located on a top floor of a Mall.
No one rules if no one obeys
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire
