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They left because their liquid crystal panels suffered from chronic burn-in and the cost of replacing them was no longer economically feasible. It was tolerable when “virtual print fees” were subsidizing the transition from 35mm film to digital but now that era is over and movie theaters owners are smart enough to buy DLP projectors which don’t suffer from the burn in problem.

The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible.

If Sony was still in the business, they would offer a certificate renewal for a small fee like the other manufacturers have done.

The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacement projectors.

Digital cinema tech here. Sony hasn’t been releasing updates since they exited the business in 2020.

This is likely an expired certificate related to the encryption on the movie files.

DCP isn't a consumer format (yet), it's only intended to protect the movie before it comes out on Bluray. And the encryption isn't convoluted at all, the private/public key system is essentially the same as what protects your information when you log into your bank's website.

Some of the projectors are connected to the DCP playback server via encrypted HD-SDI. The content is link-encrypted between the server and projector using Texas Instrument's "Cinelink" technology. If the TI "Enigma" module's private key was leaked, this would enable recording the plaintext SMPTE 292M video stream in real-time. The audio is un-encrypted obviously and easy to record, but it is watermarked so they would be able to trace back the recording to a specific KDM.

It's worth noting that the DCP format doesn't have a master key - each "reel" of an encrypted film has its own content key, which is decrypted by each DCP player's private FIPS protected key combined with a public Key Delivery Message from the distributor.

So if the DCP was indeed cracked, it was either because they gained access to the FIPS module in a DCP playback server, or they gained access to the plaintext content keys where the KDMs are generated. If they have the server's private key, they will be able to decrypt every other film that they have a KDM for and we should expect to see more DCP releases.