Colorchanging picture when playing DVDs?

[Pikcle]

I have an RCA DVD player hooked up to my VCR through red/white/yellow cables, and then from the VCR to the TV through cable.

Ive noticed in certain titles, namely Fox produced ones like Fight Club and The Boondock Saints, that thoroughout the movie it fades from normal color, to dim, to a high saturation of red, and back to normal. Its pretty noticable, but nothing to stop one from watching a movie. Im wondering why it does this?

Like I said, it only does it in certain titles. I can put it the Sopranos and itll be fine, but Fight Club does the dimming thing.

I fiddled with the hardware DVD menu, and turned off auto-dim, but it didnt seem to help.

My only guess is that its possibly copy protection, because im going through a VCR? If it is, could I possibly remove it and burn it to a new DVD? Of course I would only copy the titles I own...but I'm not too sure how touchy of a subject that is on these forums. If its taboo, sorry for brining it up =/

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[FulciLives]

I assume you are using a VCR because your TV does not have composite or S-Video connectors.

If that is the case then you can buy an RF CONVERTER ... many places sell such devices. They are not hard to find at all.

This is a small box that has inputs like your VCR ... a yellow composite video input and white/red stereo audio inputs. So you input your DVD player and it converts it to an RF cable.

Then you can plug it into the TV and by-pass the VCR.

Then no more problems due to copy protection.

This would require you however to either get an A/B box or unplug the VCR for the DVD and vice versa.

These RF converter boxes are usually not more than $30

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[ZippyP.]

My only guess is that its possibly copy protection, because im going through a VCR? If it is, could I possibly remove it and burn it to a new DVD?

Bingo! It's called macrovision and it's output by your DVD player when certain disks tell it to do so. It prevents copying of the video by your VCR. If you plug the DVD directly into your TV you won't see it.

Backing up your own DVD to DVD-r will remove the flag which turns the macrovision on. Backing up your own DVD's is perfectly fine, that's what this site is all about.