How do new TV shows get sent to other countries?
August 7, 2014 3:23 AM
According to this entertainment news article, Channel 7 "will screen an episode on December 2 and another on December 3 - just hours after it airs in the USA." What does this process look like?
How does Channel 7 get their hands on the latest, newly aired episode from the US, and what physical or digital format is it in? Is there a Bittorrent-type of file sharing site that only television stations have access to? Is an old school film reel or a DVD sent over on a plane? Is it somehow sent via satellite and someone in the foreign television station has to hit the record button on the VCR?
How does Channel 7 get their hands on the latest, newly aired episode from the US, and what physical or digital format is it in? Is there a Bittorrent-type of file sharing site that only television stations have access to? Is an old school film reel or a DVD sent over on a plane? Is it somehow sent via satellite and someone in the foreign television station has to hit the record button on the VCR?
Not TV, but probably still of interest: I went to an DoorsOpen event in a restored and operational movie theatre and got to go into the projection room and the projectionist explained all their different methods to us. They show a lot of old movies at that theatre, so they do still do actual film and splicing and the whole bit, but they said for new movies the procedure is different:
They get an encrypted hard drive with the movie on it. The movie is set to only be unencryptable and playable at certain date/times, so that the theatre can't play the movie more than it's licensed to. The big projector machine computer thing had slots where you could just slide these hard drives i like the video game cartridges of old. Once they're done with their licensed showings, they return the hard drive to the distributor.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:23 AM on August 7, 2014
They get an encrypted hard drive with the movie on it. The movie is set to only be unencryptable and playable at certain date/times, so that the theatre can't play the movie more than it's licensed to. The big projector machine computer thing had slots where you could just slide these hard drives i like the video game cartridges of old. Once they're done with their licensed showings, they return the hard drive to the distributor.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:23 AM on August 7, 2014
They did a South Park documentary on how the show is created, and the ending shows someone going to a satellite facility to upload the finalized master tape to the network for broadcast.
posted by smackfu at 6:41 AM on August 7, 2014
posted by smackfu at 6:41 AM on August 7, 2014
Is an old school film reel or a DVD sent over on a plane?
This is somewhat tangential, but this is how it used to be done, I believe. When missing Doctor Who episodes are found, they're usually found in the back of a closet in Hong Kong or Nigeria or wherever. The BBC used to destroy tapes after a while so as to not have to continue to store them. They'd send copies overseas for broadcast and sometimes those copies would get lost/stored somewhere bizarre/whatever only to be found decades later.
posted by hoyland at 7:17 AM on August 7, 2014
This is somewhat tangential, but this is how it used to be done, I believe. When missing Doctor Who episodes are found, they're usually found in the back of a closet in Hong Kong or Nigeria or wherever. The BBC used to destroy tapes after a while so as to not have to continue to store them. They'd send copies overseas for broadcast and sometimes those copies would get lost/stored somewhere bizarre/whatever only to be found decades later.
posted by hoyland at 7:17 AM on August 7, 2014
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Some major three/four letter networks are experimenting with building what can be easily described as a VPN to more easily accommodate this exact thing but it's still young and experimental.
posted by chasles at 4:32 AM on August 7, 2014