Piracy costs the US film industry millions of dollars every year

Last year, a move by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to ban "screeners" collapsed amid legal action by the independent film community.

Instead, the major studios sent out watermarked VHS tapes, rather than DVDs, to Academy members.

If the plan wins support, members would be given a special DVD player to play the encrypted screeners.

Bruce Davis, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences executive director, said it was in "early discussions" about adopting the new technology.

If it fell out of someone's pocket and was picked up by anybody in the world, it could not get hacked." Laurence Roth, Cinea

"But at this point, the ball is in the various studios' courts. They are the ones who will have to sign on and say they want to try it," he added.

Anti-piracy firm Cinea presented its system to Academy officials last month.

Laurence Roth, marketing and business development at Cinea, said its product was "a secure DVD player" on which to play the encoded DVDs.

He said: "It actually plays both regular DVDs as well as encrypted DVDs.

"It has all the bells and whistles of a high-end DVD player, but it plays specialised encrypted discs.

"The discs are encrypted using the AES 128-bit encryption standard. It's a National Security Agency-level standard, a world-class, state-of-the-art encryption standard."

Experiment

Mr Roth added: "The most important sales point is that if you lost a disc, if it fell out of someone's pocket and was picked up by anybody in the world, it could not get hacked."

Mr Davis said the level of security appealed to the academy and the individual studios alike.

But as the academy has to discuss the matter with each studio individually, it would be a slow process.

"It speaks to the concerns of some of our members who worried about what would happen if their screeners were intercepted," he said.

"We'd be willing to try it on an experimental basis if the studios are," he added.