Retrace hash with DVD player?

[Jeffhs]

Macrovision is used on DVDs to prevent illegal copying. (The DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted in 2000, means business, and yes, people have been arrested, fined and sent to prison for illicitly copying music CDs, downloading MP3 files, and let us not forget the illegal copying of DVDs.) Therefore, I think it would be unethical at best and illegal at worst to defeat the protection. If you want to own a movie you are renting from Netflix (for example), go out and buy the DVD--don't copy the Netflix disc. I tried the latter once with a DVD of a favorite old TV series (Quincy, M.E.) by copying several episodes to my hard drive, but my conscience bothered me for some time afterward, so I finally ordered the box set of the show's first-second and later third seasons from Amazon.com and erased the copies on the computer when the discs arrived.

I felt a lot better once the purchased discs came in my mail. While I don't think I would have been arrested for copying the Netflix disc into my computer for my own use, I realize there are laws against such copying (that FBI anti-piracy warning at the beginning of most commercial DVDs is all but impossible to ignore and, like the DMCA, means business), so I decided to play it safe and buy my own copies. Another nice thing about having the actual DVDs is that I can watch them on my TV, rather than having to be tethered to the computer.

As to the Macrovision protection being defeatable on some DVD players: if it is, I don't know how to do it with my own player and wouldn't do it even if I did know the procedure to do so. My first DVD player was a cheap CyberHome DVD-300S that did not, to the best of my knowledge, have any kind of provision for disabling Macrovision; my present player, a Memorex DVD-2042 full-size unit, does not seem to have any menu options to do this either, and I've studied the setup menus fairly carefully. I'll look at those menus again, but I'm fairly certain there is no easy way to defeat the copy protection unless one were willing to replace pre-progammed ICs in the player--I think most of the player's functions are on one large multipin IC, not unlike the huge "jungle" IC in today's televisions. There is a switch on the back of my player that turns on or off the progressive-scan mode, but I'm fairly sure as well that has nothing to do with Macrovision.

[jeyurkon]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Macrovision is used on DVDs to prevent illegal copying. (The DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted in 2000, means business, and yes, people have been arrested, fined and sent to prison for illicitly copying music CDs, downloading MP3 files, and let us not forget the illegal copying of DVDs.) Therefore, I think it would be unethical at best and illegal at worst to defeat the protection. If you want to own a...

This was pretty well hashed out in earlier threads. No one was talking about copying in this one unless I missed it. There's nothing illegal or unethical with defeating Macrovision if you're just trying to watch it on an old set. There's no copyright infringement. It becomes illegal when you start making copies.

John

[ihmeyers]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I think it would be unethical at best and illegal at worst to defeat the protection.

I bought this DVD player because legitimate DVDs I bought on Amazon wouldn't play without the hash on my Admiral. I'd say at least 50% of them (including my beloved Honeymooners and Kolchak) were affected.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by ihmeyers

I bought this DVD player because legitimate DVDs I bought on Amazon wouldn't play without the hash on my Admiral. I'd say at least 50% of them (including my beloved Honeymooners and Kolchak) were affected.

Oooops! My apologies.

I just read a post from John (jeyurkon) in Michigan that should clear up this whole issue once and for all. He said that there is absolutely nothing illegal about disabling Macrovision protection at the viewer level (i.e. by changing an option in an on-screen menu, as is possible with many if not most DVD players sold in the US), if the intent is simply to eliminate interference when using DVD players with older televisions. Apparently, older TVs such as your Admiral roundie (I read here recently that the problem you mention affects and is most noticeable on round-tube color TVs) are very sensitive to foreign signals such as Macrovision, which was not even thought of (neither were DVD players or, for that matter, VCRs) when your television was new.

Your set's scanning circuitry may be interpreting the Macrovision signal as some sort of trigger for retrace lines; at this point I am only guessing, and could be way off base. Not being familiar with your particular video setup, I can't say with any degree of certainty exactly what may or may not be causing the problem, although if you can eliminate the hash by disabling Macrovision at your DVD player, it really doesn't matter.

BTW, it may be impossible, or at least very difficult, to defeat Macrovision protection in very cheap DVD players such as the Coby or Memorex machines currently being offered for sale at Best Buy, discount stores, etc. for $15 or less. For example, I'm not sure if I can easily defeat the protection on my own Memorex player, which I purchased for $40 almost a year ago from Best Buy, as there does not seem to be an option on any of the on-screen menus related to Macrovision--and I've studied the menus on mine, not to mention the instruction manual, very carefully. The thing has most options found in more expensive players, such as NTSC/PAL switching, a defeatable screen saver (which reminds me, when in operation, of the old Atari PONG video game system), audio setup options and so on, but nothing that I can see regarding copy-guard systems. If there is in fact a switchable option for Macrovision it is probably hidden somewhere in one of those menus, and I mean hidden very, very well, probably so that the function cannot be altered inadvertently.

On your player it may be "on" by default; judging from what you're saying about the player causing hash on your old TV, this seems very likely. Go into the menu screens, find the option marked "Macrovision on/off" (or similar wording), and toggle the option to off; this should eliminate the hash forever and for good. In your case, it seems like it did.


BTW: Who manufactured your DVD player? it seems to me that your machine must be much, much more sophisticated than those cheapies I referred to above, if it has an OSD menu option to enable or disable copy protection.

[ihmeyers]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Oooops! My apologies.

BTW: Who manufactured your DVD player? it seems to me that your machine must be much, much more sophisticated than those cheapies I referred to above, if it has an OSD menu option to enable or disable copy protection.

Apology accepted, no problem.

I bought an ILO DVD recorder / player on E-Bay. It's a cheapie that Wal-Mart sold and they have an aftermarket software upgrade that will turn off Macrovision. The player I bought had that installed. My guess is many use that fix to copy disks but for me it was all about the re-trace. Everything plays fine now on my vintage sets.

Good luck.