Some of the latest DVDs don't contain Macrovision

NewScientist has an article, which makes us all video and DVD freaks cry because of its misuse of technical terms, but it has some interesting details about Macrovision usage in new DVD discs.

Several movie studios seem to push new DVD series out, dubbed as SuperBit, which seems to be rather ridiculous marketing method. Basically these discs are regular DVDs, just without all the goodies, such as extras, etc. Instead of the extras, discs were encoded using slightly higher bitrate, generally ranging between 4 and 8 MBit/sec (maximum videostream bitrate allowed on DVD specs is around 9.8MBit/sec). And how does this differ from regular DVD releases that generally speaking have average bitrate of 5-6MBit/sec? I have absolutely no idea.

But anyway, the point in here is the fact that these "SuperBit" discs don't have Macrovision copy protection. Macrovision is basically a dummy analog copy-protection that prevents VCR recording of the movie. All discs still contain all the other copy-protection methods, including the CSS (and those other copy-protection methods cannot be copied by normal humans, but they do require hackers -- according to the article ;-)).

Obviously Macrovision isn't very happy about this, since they make their money from licensing the protection method to movie studios.

Source: New Scientist

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 9 Nov 2002 9:22

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4 comments

Dela

I have a samsung stand-alone dvd player and i have used it to record loads of dvds-vhs. Quality comes out great. The strange thing is, when i connect my ps2 to the vhs, i cant record the same dvds(well i could record a blue screen and broken sound). Why is this?

9.11.2002 10:08 #1

dali

For the same reason some old VCR will allow copy-protected VHS replication, I guess... That is, your PS/2 seems to have built-in copy-protection issues, but your DVP doesn't seem so. VHS copy protection consists of some sort of high frequencies which we humans are not able to perceive, but can "stress" the recording, messing up the luminance, etc. There are old VCR's that can naturally bypass that copy-protection because they can't play and/or record that kind of out-of-spectrum signals. Maybe with DVD happens something similar, but I can't say it does for sure... Just my humble oppinion.

-- Daniel

10.11.2002 23:59 #2

vudoo

Yes this is true. Macrovision is built into must New DVD players. Sony in fact has some of the newest copy protection circuts inside of the playstation. I also know that Proscan (an RCA product) can copy the Macrovision process perfectly.
It seems as though we are winning the war because manufactures and the NPAA can't even afford to pay for intellectual property rights themselves. Can you say "Double Standard?"

Voodoohippi
(Defender of free cyberspace)

14.11.2002 17:31 #3

pcshateme

mono (new or old) VCRs do not pick up macrovision so if you want to copy dvds to vhs, you can get an old VCR and use a rca y- splitter cable ($.99) to split the mono into 2, insert both left and right, and when you play the tape on a newer stero vcr, it will be demacrovsioned and be in stereo.

also ps2 has 9 versions of its firmware, the newest version includes macrovision, the "older" (mines only a few months old) ones dont send out macrovision so you can send it to a vcr.

16.1.2004 13:11 #4

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