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DVD players and Macrovision 'protection'
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CRASH HARDDRIVE
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Jan 9, 2002, 06:52 PM
 
Recently we got a new DVD player. Usually I'd plug the thing into the video-ins on the TV- and indeed in the manual it says do not hook up through a VCR because of Macrovision encoding on DVDs, which won't even allow for playback.

So naturally I said fook it, and that's the first thing I tried, just because it says not to. And lo and behold, it works. Plays back fine through the VCR despite all the Macrovision crap. This is a fairly new JVC VCR too, one I know has been made since they started making these things aware of DVD copy protection. So I figure, ahh well, it must be that it allows me to playback but is able to kick in the protection when I try to record. I had no real intrest in doing so originally anyway, but I pop in a tape, hit record, and voila! It also RECORDS the signal perfectly! I figure, okay, it's gotta be the DVD, so I try several of them.. new releases, stuff that I know is MV-protected... same thing! Bonus!

Now, I've dealt with Macrovison issues before. I used to run a cable from one of my computers to the TV in the den and at first had all sorts of problems with the Macrovision kicking in and ruining the picture. I had to download a hack online to disable the Macrovision at the computer end to solve that problem. If anything, I would have thought the problem would be the opposite, no copy-protection nonsense from the computer end, and all kinds of it from a standalone set top unit.

Anyone had similar experiences with a set top unit? Maybe I just got a defective DVD player that somehow didn't kick in the Macrovision? Do most of them work like this? If this is typical, WTF is the point of all the Macrovison nonsense other than to have made it a pain in the ass to view DVDs from my old PC-to-TV setup? I dunno, it's an unexpected bonus to be able to dub VHS copies of DVDs now though.

Of late I notice people talking about new copy protection schemes on CDs and such, but it seems to me NONE of this crap really works all that well and there's always a way around it even totally unexpectedly as in this case.
     
   
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