Macrovision

[jacksrepairs]

Question: Is it the Macrovisoin feature on a DVD Player or Recorder that prevents the copying of a protected disc?

If Macrovision is turned off on the "player only" will this defeat the copyguard allowing copying to a DVD recorder that has Macrovision still turned on?

Or is it the other way around?

Or do both have to be turned off?

Just curious.

[overloaded_ide]

Some-one else may give a better answer, but macrovision is used alot on tapes and it's easy to defeat with various items that clean the video signal, macrovision is basically trash in the video.

DVDs have other protections besides macrovision. If trying to copy to a tape on a VCR then macrovision may be a probem perhaps, but DVD to DVD copy may be the CSS or such protections and that is totally different as it's kinda like hard coded into the disk or data.
There are a couple devices that may avoid such things DVD-DVD Recorder, but the easiest way is to just rip the DVD to your hard drive and burn a backup disk. The backup disk is not protected.

A few options, DVDshrink alone works for most disks. AnyDVD or DVD REGION FREE +CSS running in the background then ripping with DVDshrink for harder disks with newer protections. DVDFAB DECRYPTER is recomended by lots of folks also, though I still like DVDshrink alot better. Maybe just becuase I used shrink for years and more used to it.

A few years ago when I tried the earlier DVD recorders, I don't remember for sure if it was my problems or a friends, but a DVD of original content I had made did not copy from DVD to DVD recorder or maybe it was DVD recorder to DVD recorder, something like that though. Even though my disk had no protection on it the copy was prohibited some how but it's been along time.
Although I forget the exact details I remember it totally pi$$ed me off, I was the copy right owner of a non-protected disk and the crappy protection garbage prevented the copying of my own disks.
Of course I just burned more disks from the PC as needed, but still a load of crap the player added protections to a not protected disk.

[jman98]

Macrovision is a feature on the DVD itself. It's not a requirement. If a player turns it off, it means that the video output signal from the DVD player could, in theory, be routed to some sort of recording device and the DVD recorded. It was designed specifically to stop people from making VHS backups of DVDs. CSS was designed to, in theory, prevent people from making copies of DVDs on PCs.

DVDs recorded in DVD recorders don't use Macrovision. Macrovision is only available to movie studios, not the general public. In theory, if DVD player A had Macrovision disabled, DVD recorder B could record the component or S-Video ouput and audio output of DVD player A and make a copy of the disc, although probably at lesser quality than the original.

I'm not surprised to read that overloaded_ide couldn't copy a non-protected DVD in a DVD recorder. I have no idea whether this would still be true or not.