his handle is KingOfCoders - self-aggrandizing, insufferable, impotent in its attempts to be meta.
He thinks he's an artist because he now has the ability to curate a dataset based off of one artist's work and prompt more art generated in that style. He did it, so clearly he is an artist now.
No, the projector is never connected to the internet. It's connected to a cinema server. In the case of Sony, it's always a Sony server. This is not usually connected to the internet either. Instead, the usual topology is to have a Theater Management System (TMS) that pre-ingests content in the form of Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) and then propagates it to each auditorium's server.
This TMS is also not connected to the internet in most cases. Digital cinema is locked down tight as an ATM. Most theaters have pretty meager on-site IT, so email and thumb-drives and hard-drives still rule.
I work in cinema IoT including KDM and DCP delivery and ingestion to TMS or cinema server, and our solution is to have a separate agent inside the private cinema network that can broker communication with cinema devices like projectors, calibrators, and audio processors. Some of these have their own UIs in the local network, or if you've got the company VPN, but in general for monitoring we just rely on SNMP or server API.
The cinema servers are different. They all have APIs that provide varying levels of monitoring, control, and automation for the server, itself, as well as connected devices including limited monitoring and control of projectors and audio. They all support RDP or VNC, so if you're behind the same firewall you can get to their UI. Same with TMSes... they have UIs that you can access remotely, if you're on the company VPN.
But the projector itself? Never on the internet. It's "married" to the cinema server, and will only work with that particular server, based on their respective certs.
In Sony's case, it sounds like the projector certs have expired, so now they are invalid when used with the updated server certs.
It hasn't changed much. Most features are still delivered on drives. They're just too damn BIG otherwise.
Keys are sent separately, and are valid only for a certain date-range, and for a specific cinema server. In this case, Sony servers only work with Sony projectors, and vice-versa. Each device has its own certs, but for encrypted feature encoding, the standard is Key Delivery Messages, which unlock the feature Digital Cinema Package (DCP). DCPs are a general purpose cinema package, and is also used to deliver unencrypted clips like ads and trailers.
But the key is the Key. It's only valid for the specific cinema server, and the cinema server is "married" to the projector by encryption. This protects against on-site MITM attacks.
If there's a server update that doesn't update the certs on either the server itself, or the projector (in Sony's case), then the marriage breaks, and the silver screen stays dark.
Nothing anyone else can do about it, either, since any valid certs would have to be issued by Sony, and nobody has the private keys except Sony.
This is the most likely, yup. The certs are unlikely to have a precise end-of-year expiration. It will be whatever the expiration is for the last certs loaded.
10 years in cinema IoT, here. Features are encrypted by Key Delivery Messages (KDM), and those are per cinema server/projector "marriage". No KDM will be considered valid if the server certs are expired.
