[Chip Chester]

While these professional devices will actually remove Macrovision, it's a high-overhead way to do it, in terms of size, complexity and power.

In my years of captioning in the analog domain, I often had to guide editors through the task of modifying video content without disturbing existing captions. That led to the 'wipe from line 22 on down' technique of preserving the VBI information (captions, Nielsen codes, etc.) but replacing visible picture. (For example, this was often used to create 'tagged' spots with individual retail locations from one previously-captioned master.) Doing the opposite had the spin-off effect of disabling Macrovision. So like Jeff, it was not our primary goal.

The challenge in the digital age is verifying which equipment will faithfully throughput (or record/playback) caption data that is in the VANC area of the digital signal. Some extremely popular gear will not. Other popular gear from the same manufacturer will. So I always have to vet the chain of equipment after caption insertion to guard against unpleasant surprises.

Not a Macrovision thing, but my caption equipment can set or reset the record flag in the digital signal. But in a similar vein, my (pro) HD-SDI recorders don't pay attention to that flag, and will record anything.