Page 1 of Blimey! Macrovision on VHS was one big smokescreen.

I`m always behind the curve on these things, and it`s only recently that I decided to back up the old VHS collection to DVD.

I still have some venerable recordings off the telly that aren`t available on DVD for sale, but I want to keep, and when my last VHS player died and I couldn`t find a half decent new one, I bit the bullet and bought this Panasonic combi unit with an HDD, DVD, Freeview, VHS, and toaster. The guy selling it to me, told me vehemently that it wouldn`t let me copy pre-recorded VHS, and that as soon as it detected Macrovision on the tape, it would stop the recorder and throw up a warning screen.

I resigned myself to saving my old telly recordings only, but on the off chance, I through in a store bought tape of Laurel and Hardy, and to my surprise it worked. I tried a few more pre-records and they worked too.

I still have a lot of store bought VHS tapes. (I got bored with Star Trek a few years back and only wound up replacing The Next Gen and the movies) I tried a few DS9 and TOS tapes at random and they all worked.

So I`m sitting there, thinking, either a) None of these tapes have Macrovision, or b) Getting my player Region hacked killed the Macrovision detection.

I have been happily backing stuff up to disc, mostly the stuff which never got released on DVD (a lot of Manga Video, Star Trek: The Motion Picture Theatrical Version), and it`s given me the impetus to finally dump those videotapes I`ll never watch again anyway).

This morning, I get to the end of the 30 or so pre-records that I wanted to back up. And my Player finally spits out a warning and stops the copy. So from all the tapes that I wanted to copy, and assuming all the Trek tapes... around 200 pre-recorded tapes...

It transpires that 3... just 3 have Macrovision Protection. Two of them are Disney tapes, which you would expect. The other is The Lawnmower Man.

So all this time I was sitting there, watching VHS, complaining about a subliminal flicker on the store bought movies, which I always assumed was Macrovision, was really just a wodge load of naff copies. All that crap the studios fed us about copy protection, about electronic watermarks, about how they would prevent us from stealing their property, was all bulls***, and hardly any of them bothered shelling out on Macrovision. It was never there.

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Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

My Top 20 movies at YMDB
Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

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I had the anniversary boxed set of all of the Star Trek films (up to First Contact at the time) and that definitely had MV. Could get around it be copying to Beta though. Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction/True Romance had it as well. I think it was used on a fair amount of tapes.

Macrovision never really delivered what the Studios thought it would, but it did enough to get the company`s feet under the Studio table. I think MV was added to rental tapes more than retail copies, and only the hardline companies like Disney (who have always begrudged the public having their own copies of their films), used it on everything.

You could get filters to get rid of the spoiler signal once, at least until Hollywood bought itself a few MPs...

J Mark Oates

The only VHS I ever namaged to record was Bio-Dome

But for the life of me I can`t remember why I rented it in the first place

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IIRC, most (or all) tapes released by CIC Video in the 80s and early 90s didn`t have MacroVision.This would include Star Trek and anything CIC released on behalf of Paramount and Universal.

Some distributors/studios like CBS/Fox and Warner Home Video used it on practically everything from around 1987 onwards.

I think a lot depended on the replication plant as well. IIRC, the Macrovision spoiler signal was added between the clean master tape and the slave recorders, so depending on who owned the plant the filter was either switched on or off as a matter or course. I can`t recall if thermal transfer really took off for VHS, which would have meant the master tape would have had the MV signal to start with.

J Mark Oates

Ah well, managed to get my Star Wars Theatrical Versions backed up, so I won`t be multidipping on those for a while. Now working on The Making Of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Trek 25th Anniversary tapes that were released with the widescreen VHS boxsets, and that`ll be all my pre-records done.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

My Top 20 movies at YMDB
Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

VHS 2 VHS aha those were the days .... bout 20 years ago...

I used a "Top Loader" Ferguson Videostar (the one with the big piano keys) as the recorder and it did every MV tape going, Disney, Warner, CBS/FOX, with no issues what so ever. I was " The Video King" at school haha like 23 years ago now!!!!!

Quote:
Ah well, managed to get my Star Wars Theatrical Versions backed up
I got them as a pressie last year, they were a fiver each from Play, easier than faffing about trying to transfer and better quality than my old grainy VHS stuff.

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

Considering I had the OT boxset when it came out, I wasn`t about to buy them again just for the theatrical versions.

There`s not a lot of faffing involved. Copy tape to HDD, edit, copy file to disc, done. Simples. Admittedly the letterbox VHS resoltion is worse than the DVD letterbox resolution, but I did it for my own peace of mind, for when VHS finally, truly dies. I doubt that I`ll actually watch them. :/

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

My Top 20 movies at YMDB
Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com