I have a little gizzmo that connects between 2 vcrs. It filters out the Macrovision and other scrambling devices so that tapes can be copied (naw, I wouldn’t ever do this outside of the “fair use” laws;) )
Anyway, I noticed there are several different brands of “Dual VCR” units around now. How exactly do they work? Are they connected internally, or are there cables between them externally? I ask because, what exactly do they think people are using them for, to copy the tape of Grandpos 99th birthday party? Is it possible to block out macrovision with these things? I bet some doper has one and can tell me.
You haven’t been getting any replies at all, so maybe if I relate the rumor I heard it will be a start.
I heard that the dual drive VCR’s (which are internally connected) copy the signal in a “raw” fashion. So if you attempt to copy a tape with macrovision, you succeed, but the copy has macrovision too.
Still, if this feature is important to you, I would test it before I buy. It’s at least possible that all units cannot be painted with the same brush.
I used to work in an electronics store that sold these things. The brand name was/is “GoVideo” - I haven’t seen them in a while, but I haven’t gone looking for them lately either.
Anyway, assuming they’re still available, they were essentially just 2 VCR’s connected internally. I don’t think that each VCR mechanism had external connections. The unit was able to copy Macrovision-protected tapes (though I don’t know if the copy was also Macrovisioned as suggested above).
The thing seemed to work pretty well. Probably worth it if you need to copy tapes fairly often. The only thing I’d wonder about - if they were forced to take out the MacroVision decoder due to possible DMCA-related issues. Worth looking into, certainly.
My sister-in-law used a GoVideo for quite some time to copy videotapes of sports events for other interested parents–it meant that only one person had to deal with a camera the whole time. The copy quality was slightly higher even on non-macrovisioned tapes like this. There was some noise at one point about adding circuitry to shut down the recorder, or scramble the signal if copy protection was detected, but I’m not sure if anything came of it.
Mostly, I wanted to point out that there are legitimate (i.e. “non-copyright violating”) applications for the things.