A Little Help and Understanding

[Smack2k]

Can someone explain why the following works for a friend of mine, yet mine does not.....

My friend has an ATI All-In-WONDER 8500 and the drivers for the multimedia software (TV, DVD. CD. etc..) are version 7.6. He can play any VHS tape through the ALL-IN-WONDER card and without a TBC unit and his pictures are perfectly clear, no macrovision.

I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 and the drivers for my multimedia center are version 9.1. I cannot play any VHS tapes from my VCRs through the capture card without seeing the macrovision on the video.

We used the same VCR and same RCA cables to test this on both machines.

I was told that you needed a TBC for the video to play clear through an ATI Capture Card so I am really confused why it worked on my friends machine without a TBC (The VCR we tested with did not have a TBC)
Could there be something wrong with my PC setup or is it something else?

Will installing the older drivers allow my tapes to play without the macrovision?

Thanks!

[thecoalman]

Can someone explain why the following works for a friend of mine, yet mine does not.....

My friend has an ATI All-In-WONDER 8500 and the drivers for the multimedia software (TV, DVD. CD. etc..) are version 7.6. He can play any VHS tape through the ALL-IN-WONDER card and without a TBC unit and his pictures are perfectly clear, no macrovision.

That's interesting, from my understanding the flashing you see is because of hardware and not software drivers. It's how it works on a VCR to VCR copy. It has always been a theory of mine(amateur at best) that the reason this issue has never been addressed by ATI in the drivers is that it can't be. In other words there's nothing they can do to fix it since it's a piece of hardware embedded on the card. To further my theory another capture card I have a Geforce VIVO doesn't exhibit the flashing but simply a block of color over most of the capture. Reverting to older drivers without the MV detection fixes it easily.

I have read in other posts and I get the feeling that this is less of an issue with some of the older cards. There is a certain combination of mmc and drivers that work very well with certain cards. Could be that my theory is right....

As for installing older drivers or anything else I think your out of luck. I fought this problem for 1 to 2 months. Nothing works, you need to have a clean signal going to the card before it will work properly.

[Smack2k]

So the old ones (the 8500) will work and mine (the 9800) will not?

That stinks for sure, but its also amazing ATI would put out newer products with less features....

Is it possible to run two Capture Cards in a system? If I need to find an 8500 card just to the VCR transfers, it is much cheaper than a TBC.

Thanks

[thecoalman]

So the old ones (the 8500) will work and mine (the 9800) will not?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not positive about that. Just seems that way from most of the posts I have read including yours. Seems they are a little bit easier to get to work correctly. I'd listen to someone else that has experience with that card. I was just making an observation.

[freebird73717]

I think alot of it has to do with the card you have. I have a very old AIW 32mb radeon card and use 8.8mmc not sure of catalyst version. I downloaded the ati macrovision hacks from www.digitalfaq.com and that was all i needed to capture vhs with no extra equipment.

[thecoalman]

I think alot of it has to do with the card you have. I have a very old AIW 32mb radeon card and use 8.8mmc not sure of catalyst version. I downloaded the ati macrovision hacks from www.digitalfaq.com and that was all i needed to capture vhs with no extra equipment.

I have heard of success with the hacks on older cards but they are useless for the newer ones.

[lordsmurf]

That stinks for sure, but its also amazing ATI would put out newer products with less features....

That "feature" as you call it is mostly ILLEGAL. Products are not allowed to circumvent anti-copy. The gripe comes along when legitimate errors are confused for MV protection.

ATI is not the only one. Most VCRs, DVD recorders and capture cards have this "problem". It's there by design, not by accident.

If you want to circumvent it, you need one of three things.
See this post:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=246129