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  #16  
Old 08-08-2009, 10:40 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ihmeyers View Post
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.
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  #17  
Old 08-08-2009, 11:36 PM
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ChrisW6ATV ChrisW6ATV is offline
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The ability to turn off the Macrovision off (or change the region code) will never be in the normal menus, nor will it be mentioned in the instruction manual, because strictly speaking it IS illegal to make those changes (at least in the USA, due to our stupid DMCA law). It is always a "hidden" option, found only by hitting some unusual combination of keys on the remote control or similar. Few if any major-brand DVD players will even have these obscure menu options, because they customize players for specific countries (and would, of course, block those options in players intended for the USA). Some countries such as Australia (thank goodness their government has some sense!) have outlawed the use of region coding and/or have no penalties for defeating such unwanted "features", so low-priced players have the menu options to make the players salable in more countries.

I put a link in an earlier post to search for the hidden menus on any player. For those of us with retrace-line problems or other issues with our early TVs, it could be worthwhile to look up the cheap players available to see if they can be set to have a clean output signal.
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  #18  
Old 08-09-2009, 08:58 PM
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AUdubon5425 AUdubon5425 is offline
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Back in college I had a beautiful (and heavy) '75 Motorola Quasar console. Over half of my VHS tapes wouldn't play correctly on it because of Macrovision - I kept a 13" Sears set on top of it just to play tapes (no DVDs back then!)

I'm glad there are solutions available to correct the problem, as I plan to put a couple of old sets back into regular use before year's end.
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  #19  
Old 08-10-2009, 07:35 PM
ihmeyers ihmeyers is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs View Post
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.
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