Most of the Academy Awards® are decided based on votes made after watching movies on video. They used to be distributed on VHS, and now it’s DVD, of course. These DVD’s are called screeners.
Because movies released at the end of the year, like last year’s Brokeback Mountain, aren’t yet out on DVD, the screeners are candidates for not only Oscar™ consideration, but for video piracy. To prevent piracy of Academy screeners, a company called Cinea marketed a secure DVD system that required a special player with a dialup connection. The technology was a reworking of the Divx (not to be confused with DivX) system sold by Circuit City for a couple of years.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bought into Cinea’s program, but only a couple of the movie studios went along with it. I know somebody who was involved with the screener project. Cinea isn’t officially calling it quits, but the project has pretty much been shut down, and my friend no longer works there.