A while back, I asked why some of my rented DVDs were not working. The color would slowly wave in and out, from bright normalcy to a shadowy red shade. I thought at first it might be my DVD player, but it’s not*. It’s the copyright protection, I’ve been told.
Last week, I rented “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and it didn’t work. I took it back to the video store and they gave me another copy. Hubby and I tried to watch it tonight, and guess what? It didn’t work, though the other movie we rented worked just fine.
Hubby says just to ask for my money back, and we’ll wait for it to come on cable. It seems likely that film has been encoded in a way that is unviewable by our player and every copy will do the same thing. He reminded me that the same thing happened with a used copy of “Kill Bill” we bought from the store. Both copies we got didn’t work. (Never returned the second one. I forgot and now it’s too late.)
Is his reasoning sound? Is this a frequent problem? Is there any way of fixing it? Whose fault is it: the store for carrying crappy copies, or the company who makes them unviewable because of paranoia they might be copied?
Player is hooked directly into TV, and is less than two years old. Most DVDs work.
It might be your TV. Some (not many, but some) TVs have an AGC circuit in them, similar to that used in a VCR’s recording circuitry. If yours is one, then the embedded Macrovision might be causing the problem–the first symptoms you describe (the color fading in and out) is very typical of Macrovision. There are a few possible solutions. If you go through your TV’s menus, you might see a way to switch this feature on or off. This would be your best choice, if possible. Then there are devices, called video stabilizers, which essentially strip out the original sync signals and replace them with clean generated ones. Since Macrovision is embedded in the sync signal, this device will remove its protection. Some DVD players are readily modified to turn off the Macrovision; there are tons of hack sites devoted to this and other DVD-related hacks, such as region removal.
Especially if it happens only on some discs – not all DVDs have copy protection.
You can use a program like DVD Shrink or Nero Recode to make a backup copy, which strips the Macro protection, and see if that works. (Just to verify whether or not that’s the problem; I’m not advocating video piracy here!)
However, in light of the above post, for Mac users who may be suffering similar, Mac The Ripper and DVD2One in conjunction can be used to help determine where the problem is.
Just make sure you destroy and copies you make! Video piracy is a SERIOUS problem!
Out of curiosity: you say that the DVD player is hooked directly into the TV. Is the TV, by chance, one of those TV/VCR combo units? If so, then that may be your problem right there. As in, while an ordinary TV will not normally have a problem with Macrovision, a TV/VCR combo unit will, because the VCR portion (through which all of its video signals pass) contains the extra circuitry that allows Macrovision to do its dirty business.
That’s the AGC circuit I mentioned earlier. AGC stands for automatic gain control, and its purpose is to ensure that the video signal level isn’t too high, otherwise the magnetic recording media might saturate, resulting in a terrible picture. The AGC looks at the sync signal to determine the signal level of the following video frame, and adjusts its output accordingly. Macrovision hijacks this process. What happens is, the Macrovision periodically ramps up the level in the sync signal to the max. The AGC sees this and basically says “Oh, no! The signal level is way to high! I better turn it down”. However, since the actual video level is unchanged, the picture goes dark. Then, the Macrovision returns the level to normal and the cycle repeats over and over a couple times per second. Since videotape is falling out of favor in the home market with the availability of relatively low-cost DVD recorders, Macrovision is becoming less and less common, and DVD producers are relying more on CSS protection, instead.
I don’t have the equipment required to make a copy, anyway.
The TV in question is a Panasonic, about twelve years old, which has a built-in VCR. I’ll try switching the DVD player to another TV and see if that fixes the problem.
That will almost certainly fix the problem. As noted by Max Torque above, some TV/VCR combos put the AGC circuit directly in line with the video input, which affects both the VCR and the TV. It would seem that yours is one of those.
