Macrovision: The Copy Protection in VHS

[@outsider344]

This channel is a hidden gem. How bad is the youtube algorithm that being subscribed to techmoan did not cause this channel to be recommended to me?

[@mystica-subs]

Add bigclivedotcom AvE and EEVBlog and itd probably have notified you, like it did for me, sometime last autumn.

[@outsider344]

You would think so, but no. I was already subscribed to them as well.

[@Norweeg]

Yeah, this channel was just now recommended to me and I’m a regular watcher of all those channels. Now I’ve been binge watching this channel all evening.

[@grex9101]

Techmoan is awesome.

[@zdskillz849]

outsider344 yeeaah techmoan

[@illiterate467]

What really struck me while watching your video: I was sitting here thinking, "Hmm, my grandad never had this problem copying videos." I mean, as a pirate in my own right I'd always heard of Macrovision (specifically the DVD variety, as that's when I becoming interested in copying) but for my grandfather in the VHS era this was NEVER an issue. Cue the ancient VCR. And now everything makes sense. He had a relatively new VCR that we played the tapes on, hooked up to an old-as-hell VCR (an RCA also I believe) that did all the recording. Funny how something as simple as an older device defeats the complicated protections that Macrovision put into place. This video really brought me back to my childhood and my grandfather's obsession with copying rented VHS tapes. The man rarely ever bought a brand new video when it came out, but went to the video rental store weekly and copied everything. He had copies of every action film imaginable from the early 80s to mid 90s. Norris, Bronson, Stallone, Seagal, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger (I especially liked Terminator & Predator). The guy never thought twice about us kids watching these violent films with him either. Lol. Fun times, man. Thanks for reminding me about my Grandad!

[@williamreid6255]

ILLiterate What about _Die Hard?_

[@rocbolt]

Same here, I had no idea macrovision was so prevalent cause we recorded every tape that came through the house without issue. The second VCR was early 80’s vintage and outlived every VCR that came later (it also had a built in screen making it great for dubbing) and clearly was unimpressed by macrovision

[@jorgerivas8494]

Some not all. Look for a VCR that has adjustable volume controls like those made by canon.

[@cognizantretard]

Lol your grand dad sounds a lot like my dad. I remember when my dad ran into issues he ran a strong magnet over it (The cassette). It oddly enough worked every time for him, but it could had just been his showman ship to hide his hidden hand to prevent us from sharing his secrets. That man is a fucking wizard

[@themadmoderator8465]

we used a betamax player top end one we had got on clearance and shit load of cheep tapes. worked all the time.

[@philwood5288]

The macrovision defeating box was available from Radio Shack for $39.95 in 1994. Not exactly gray market.

[@flowerpt]

They called it a video stabalizer, or a video amplifier - the grey is that they never called it a Macrovision defeat device.

[@Raguleader]

Yeah, but look what happened to them. Bam, out of business. Like two decades later, but still.

[@badopcode]

Still exist today with the HDMI copy protection scheme. $10 for an "HDMI extender." So Hollyweird implemented the ultimate copy protection! Every movie they make sucks and now no one wants to pirate their stuff any more. EA and many of the game manufactures have now implemented this new method of copy protection.

[@sgillman16]

badopcode lmao

[@ryandavis7011]

Back in the day I think I recorded from my TVs "monitor out" instead of from the source VCR - the tv would only output a stable image.

[@y0uCantHandle]

I like your little details. Like when you were crediting the wavy “rain man” title, the credits were wavy too

[@eldinhoelker6170]

Time stamp?

[@y0uCantHandle]

Eldin Hoelker 6:55

[@stacyswirl]

My family had a huge collection of copied VHS tapes. Any time we rented a tape, if we liked the movie we'd make a copy. I remember at one point it became more difficult, as in it would often end up with the weird getting darker and lighter thing shown here. I'm pretty sure for a while we accidentally got around it by using a different VCR or possibly 3 VCRs hooked together, but we didn't really know why it worked. This video was super informative! Thanks!

[@JosephDavies]

"Many people thought that their new DVD players were broken." They were. The DVD players were intentionally sending a bad signal specifically to create that effect. The fact that it was triggering it when it "shouldn't" is just collateral damage in this system. Nearly all passive copy-protection schemes rely on the concept of breaking something to prevent interoperability and flexibility, and minimizing collateral damage just enough that the average consumer will be comfortable accepting the invisible-but-no-less-damning limitation on their own rights. An optimally functional DVD player would *never* be designed to send out a bad sync signal. These Macrovision-enabled machines were defective by design.

[@bsadewitz]

Exactly. Anything with a framebuffer will kill Macrovision, so they couldn't have that.

[@yosefmacgruber1920]

These days, when more stuff is done by computer software, programmers should be smarter, and have their software search for garbage nonsense in the files, and decide, "Well this protocol is just garbage, and so I will just choose to ignore or bypass it or find another way around it." Even fuel-burning engine ECUs can often detect a bad sensor sending signals out-of-range and decide to ignore a faulty sensor and set things to average or to "limp home mode" so as to avoid a tow, and alert the driver of a problem to get looked into soon.

[@DeannaEarley]

Yosef MacGruber there is a common adage in software engineering to be very loose in what you accept, but very strict on what you create. This allows interoperability with less compliant stuff.

[@DerekKerton]

It's very easy for something to go wrong, even when all Parties involved are trying to make it work. Corroded terminals, bad capacitor, old VHS, etc. So, when shitty companies don't build for the consumer, but instead DESIGN-IN ways the system is SUPPOSED TO fail, well, then it will fail, but it will fail more often, and more easily than they planned. Hollywood Copyright maximalism doesn't give a crap about the honest user. We're just collateral damage. They're more concerned with the pirates. And they fail at that battle. What pisses me of is my VCR vendor should treat ME as their paying customer. But they always treated the customer as the second priority, the Studios as #1.

[@punker4Real]

@@yosefmacgruber1920 i don't know about that I have a 2008 with a bad throttle(motor) l never got the CEL but noticed the issue when it would not go above 3,000 rpm ran it that way for a year then it fried my spark plug and started misfiring.. still waiting on the spark plug cables

[@CatsMeowPaw]

Remember when home video killed off the entire movie industry as threatened by Valenti in 1982? Nope, neither do I. Hollywood et al, stop putting silly and ultimately futile copy protection into your devices. It just frustrates end consumers and does nothing to stop professional copiers.

[@4jp]

It is weird how worried they were about low resolution copies on tiny CRT displays. Copy worries make sense now that we have 70+ inch displays and multichannel surround sound. You can get pretty close to cinema experience for a few thousand dollars.

[@kaseyboles30]

Consider that back then VGA was very expensive high res and the idea of near cinema level home displays, let alone cheap enough for those that cannot just spend more on any video they want, was a long time away at best and they figured they'd just up their game then. They were 'protecting' a state of the art viewing experience back then.

[@ian1352]

That happened after the cassette killed music right? I remember the big fuss they made about cassettes way back. And they're still spinning the same story about copying killing the industry off. Yet they pull in billions.

[@alexc3504]

@@ian1352 by kill off they all mean "less quarterly profits"

[@NecrosAcolyte]

Copy protection is a violation of your perpetual license, which you have more of a legal right to than they have to protect their IP. Without a legitimate way around it that would invalidate its purpose it is not actually legal to implement these kinds of systems. It never has been, and a class action lawsuit against any of these companies would end the practice.

[@aadams1006]

I remember how our collective dads back in the day made it practically their life's goal to get around copy protection!

[@sgillman16]

Collective dads back in the day? How old are you?

[@rabbit73au]

Than at the end of VCRs they had a setting for making copies my dad Sony has it you can make copies with it getting around it

[@tangibleblockofwisdom6386]

Yes. My dad and his mate, they uh.. worked out ‘a system’, eventually. I think they jumped the audio and video to another two VCRs to ‘wash’ signal. Like the mafia does with money, or something. And only a fraction of the murders. Eventually worked out a simpler way.

[@chinmin1942]

@@tangibleblockofwisdom6386 I love this description of these people effectively laundering A/V signals.

[@gregorsamsa1364]

Not all of our dad's were criminals

[@MrMario2011]

I remember when DVD player rentals were a thing (not DVDs, the whole player) they had written instructions in there stating to NOT hook up the DVD player into a VCR. As a kid I figured out there was an "input" button on the VCR's remote which allowed composite pass-through with no further interference. However I'm sure a lot of people who rented DVD players ran into that issue described near the end, so our local shop just decided to put that warning on as a catch all.

[@JimmyEsposito]

ok

[@Josh.Davidson]

ok

[@FooxTru]

ok

[@joko49perez]

ok

[@bobpaul1143]

ok

[@KuddlesTehKitty]

I love the captions of your videos. Really appreciate that they are not auto generated. Thank you for the extra work!

[@noobiesmurf]

Virgin modern VCR: chases tracking and has to ask where the frame starts and what the signal strength is. Chad old VCR: doesn't care, records what it wants, when and how it wants.

[@zsin128]

@ɮօʊռċɛ օʄʄ lol

[@batsardcat3285]

@ɮօʊռċɛ օʄʄ people will pay for those just for the commercials, it's lost media if it's old enough, which channels and how long ago?

[@filminginportland1654]

ɮօʊռċɛ օʄʄ They all did that, not sure what you mean. Hit record and it’ll go until it’s out of tape.

[@filminginportland1654]

Chad? What does that mean?

[@zsin128]

Filming In Portland guy who gets all the girls

[@coewayman7507]

As a husband of a photosensitive/phono sensitive epileptic thank you for including a warning in your video most people have little knowledge/care of the subject of epilepsy.

[@ajf2k]

I remember using an old top-loading VCR to copy tapes when I was in high school to avoid the protection. Then I found a Macrovision filter at K-Mart (it was sold as a "video stabilizer" and used a 9v battery). There was another device called a Sima Copymaster that did the same thing. I still have them somewhere. Ah, memories.

[@AvidRetro]

Here is another way macrovision could be defeated but it involved hacking a Liteon DVD recorder kzbin.info/www/bejne/o16ufqOapKeiipo

[@springchickena1]

what was the weird vhs cleaning tape you put in? lmfao. how does a vhs tape clean the vhs player.

[@baddestmofoalive]

I would love to see an episode about how premium pay-per-view channels were controlled and how the old “black boxes” worked to bypass the protection

[@harrisonlichtenberg3162]

I was so young when this stuff was still in use that I never appreciated how clever the technology is. Looking back, this is pretty neat indeed

[@hermanappelgren]

In Sweden (where I live) and many other countries there is a fee on all data storage media including HDDs, flash memory and DVDs. This fee is distributed to copyright holders. The idea is that some people will use the media to copy music or movies for personal use which, as stated in the video, is completely legal, and that the creator should be compensated in some way. It’s always bugged me how the copyright holders has the stomach to take this fee, while at the same time doing their utmost to stop you from making legal copies of the material. Still, from an engineering standpoint, it is always interesting to learn how it works :)

[@denshi-oji494]

Interesting thing is I believe the fees are also still collected and forwarded to the copyright holders in the USA also, even though they take many steps and have since created other laws that prohibit it... Get paid royalties for copies, and also do not let anyone make the copies. That really sounds a bit crooked to me.

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

Same in my country (Lithuania). Every electronic device with storage media is taxed according to how much storage capacity it has. The money collected is then distributed to copyright holders to somewhat compensate for piracy.

[@peter_smyth]

That's a silly law as media companies get money if you buy media to make your own home videos.

[@hermanappelgren]

I don't know exactly how the fees are distributed, but I think it's distributes internationally and not just to Swedish creators, though I'm not sure on the specifics. It is a very silly law indeed, especially nowadays as everyone (at least in Sweden) stream music rather than buy/make physical copies. I don't know why they made this law. To me, it would make more sense to put an extra charge on the copyrighted material rather than the storage media. After all, it is the person who buys the music/movie who has the right to copy it and should be charged for it. As you said, it is very likely that you buy storage media for some other purpose, and without buying the music, you don't have anything to make legal copies of. The fees also don't scale well to improved storage technology, so the fee increases the price of small and cheap storage, like USB sticks, by more than 50 %.

[@MayContainJoe]

The EU has a law that bans circumventing copy protections - operating and selling that ancient RCA VCR which ignores Macrovision is illegal too. At the same time, copyright owners still collect copyright fees on every device and media including Bluray (!) drives and discs for private copying of movies.

[@vwestlife]

There was one VHS copy protection scheme which predated Macrovision, called (imaginatively enough) "Stop Copy", which dates back to at least 1980, but it was never widely used. And there was a later revision of Macrovision in the 1990s which made it more difficult to defeat using a commonly available "video stabilizer" (which anyone could buy at Radio Shack for under $30). If you see the image go out of sync as well as just vary in brightness, then you're seeing the effect of the later version of Macrovision. (This predates the even greater messing around with the video signal that DVD players did with their Macrovision encoding.) Also, Betamax was never subjected to any copy protection, probably because by the time Macrovision got into widespread use, Beta's market share was so low that it was considered irrelevant.

[@CallanChristensen]

You have reminded me of how odd I thought it was when I was growing up and my dad purchased one of those "video stabilizers" in the mid 90's. The idea of buying something off the shelf from a nation-wide retailer to defeat a copy protection that made it more difficult to commit copyright infringement seems so strange now. I guess the modern equivalent is buying a copy of Nero from Walmart?

[@vwestlife]

Video stabilizers did have legitimate uses, though, such as to improve picture quality when copying your own home-recorded videotapes, or for old TVs on which Macrovision-encoded tapes would show a degraded image even when not attempting to make an illegal copy of them. And Go Video sold dual-deck VCRs which would let you copy tapes all within one unit -- but those did not defeat Macrovision.

[@buckfiden6227]

VWestlife Macrovision was invented for JVC. JVC paid Macrovison to come up with an anti-copy scheme b/c the studios were suing Sony over the Betamax & JVC wanted to cover their asses. They didn’t care if you couldn’t record something, As long as they could still sell you recorders & blank tapes. Macrovison didn’t bother making their scheme work with Beta, 8mm or any other format. Beta was too strong (in the difference in Recording signal) to be much affected by it anyway. Beta pre-Recorded movies did have Macrovison (Back to the Future & others in witch the VHS was Also protected.) That would only stop you from coping it from Beta to VHS.

[@NJRoadfan]

The AGC circuit in Betamax machines really didn't care about Macrovision. Ironically the only tape I have with that "Stop Copy" was a pre-recorded Betamax movie (Disney's 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, not surprising it was the Mouse). It did something weird with the color subcarrier as video capture cards would show a reddish horizontal bar quickly scanning from the top to bottom of the video frame. My old plasma TV refused to display a picture at all playing back that tape, so I suppose it worked on something!

[@ScottyKirk1]

I never found one I couldn't copy with mine, although it wasn't bought at a retail outlet. Best Buy did sell one back then.

[@OzoneGrif]

I was very annoyed at Macrovision at the time, because sometimes I bought VHS tapes to watch a good movie, and the copyprotection was so strong that the original, commercial, tape had crap quality on my TV, almost like a copy. So, just like DRMs, they punish the honest people too.

[@allanrichardson1468]

That "original, commercial, tape" may have been pirated by overseas copying companies and sold cheaply to unscrupulous or unsuspecting rental vendors as hot "unclaimed freight" deals (most likely to independent stores, not big chains like Blockbusters). The owner of the shop probably refunded money to complaining customers and trashed the individual tape. When the complaints began to mount up, they switched vendors, but may have left some of the less popular titles on the shelf. At any rate, the statute of limitations has probably run out by now.

[@meetoo594]

Before rental tapes were heat sealed we used to open them up and swap the original tape spool for the copy we just made, maybe you had one of those as pretty much everyone with access to 2 decks and a screwdriver did this. It didnt matter if the macrovision buggered up the copy as that was going into the rental tapes shell.

[@allanrichardson1468]

meetoo594 I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I was thinking of small to medium industrial scale piracy, but unscrupulous “handyman” customers could do that also.

[@OzoneGrif]

In my case, they had all holograms of certification from the major... and sold in retail, so most definitely not copies. It wasn't as smart and perfect as it's marketed as, since the copy protection WAS sometimes fucking up official tapes.

[@enginerd80]

Ozone Grif Then, could it be that those tapes with low quality picture were just so worn, after having been watched so many times before? edit: or that's what I would suspect if it was a rental tape, which also was discussed in this thread. But if it was a bought, new tape, then the cause would have to be something else.

[@scottgamedev]

Extremely minor correction from a Wallace and Gromit fan, almost 12 months on: 04:04 This is actually about 12 seconds of footage of "A Grand Day Out" (1989), though it does transition into (the masterpiece) "The Wrong Trousers" (1993) afterwards! Great work as always!

[@bychrischannel]

That was a trailer.

[@Gilby1385]

@@bychrischannel I was just about to say that!!!

[@gammaboost]

It isn't "The wrong trousers". It's "The wrong footage"!

[@samuelfellows6923]

😁 - 🇬🇧

[@Okurka.]

Any electronics magazine I had in those days featured a circuit to build a "video stabilizer" to defeat Macrovision.

[@MrBilld75]

Yeah, they sold them in stores too. Just ran on a 9v battery (or DC adapter).

[@danblundon2838]

I found a pretty easy way around this copy protection back in the day. I discovered that although copying to VHS wouldn't work, you could copy to Beta Hi-Fi with no issues at all. This worked for both prerecorded VHS as well as DVD's. I had a CBC station a few blocks away, who would regularly give me their discarded Betacam 20 and 30 minute tapes, which ran 2 and 3 hours in my machine, so I had stacks of archived movies that I'd rented and copied.

[@freeculture]

Betamax was immune to Macrovision.

[@danblundon2838]

Clearly, though I can't help but wonder why, given the information in this video. I'd love it if he did a follow up covering this quirk, and what methods of copy protection were implemented in Beta, as I can recall trying to dub Beta to Beta copies of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, only to find the result unwatchable. It also wouldn't copy from the factory Beta to VHS, but this was the only Beta tape I ever encountered with any sort of copy protection. So it may have been quite rare.

[@AaronOfMpls]

When I was a kid, we copied some Three Stooges tapes that way, since a.) our second VCR was VHS and our first was Beta (with a Beta Hi-FI module under it), and b.) we already had some prerecorded Three Stooges tapes on Beta. No idea if the VHS tapes had Macrovision or not, but after reading your post, I'm guessing it wouldn't have mattered.

[@robertgaines-tulsa]

Why you dirty, little... :P

[@Knightmessenger]

I remember one time during my internship for a feature Fox Sports Net Detroit used a clip from a boxing movie. I asked how they got the dvd onto the Betacam tape and they said they just copied it, like it was no issue. Note that **Betacam SP** is not the same as *Betamax* although the tapes could be the same size.

[@TechnologyConnections]

Arrgh! So there was a previous version of this video which had errors pointed out by a Patron, and I didn't entirely eliminate it! There was one reference to the video signal being inverted, which isn't the case over composite video. When broadcast over the air, the amplitude modulation is inverted, but that isn't the case for how video is stored on tape and sent over composite. Also, this video is the first using a new microphone--I need to work on post-processing a little more because I'm not super satisfied with the sound. However, the noise level was much improved so there is potential!

[@Zwordfish88]

get an isotope vst for noise reduction thank me later!

[@electronash]

"clipping" is a perfectly fine term in this case, as you can have both "analog" and "digital" clipping. ;)

[@wexoni]

Thank you for your effort. I really like your work.

[@call_me_stan5887]

Zwordfish88 - no need for isotope. Just record noise sample in a DAW and substract from the voice recording. There are also free plugins that will do just that thing. Any noise gate will work too.

[@pancudowny]

Technology Connections Okay, don't judge me... but I discovered years ago there aren't any copyguards on tapes of adult films. It seems odd to me that such a lack of protection exists on said type of material, but I imagine it's because the adult film industry lacked the financial resources to afford it.

[@SuperTrainStationH]

I found a very interesting form of VHS protection. I was preserving home recorded VHS tapes my grandmother recorded of TV programming the 80's to DVD using a VHS-DVD-RW combo player. I found one home tape with "Sleeping Beauty" written on it, so I set it up to transfer to DVD, expecting to preserve a day of programming from say, WNYW Fox 5 or something like that. Instead interface on the DVD burner says "this tape can not be copied" and refused to work, as though I were attempting to duplicate a commercially released VHS with copy protection. Curious, I ran through the tape, and found it not to be recorded off broad cast TV, but that it was an actual commercial release of Sleeping Beauty from an official tape onto a blank store brought VHS. I'm just cruious as to what kind of protection in 1980'S tape would trigger a 2015 built VHS-DVD burner's copy protection protocol, yet allow itself to be flawlessly duplicated between two normal VCRs, as I'v eseen the sort of copy protection where transfer between two VCRs produced a deliberately distorted image.

[@kaseyboles30]

Probably the vhs copied to wasn't susceptible to macro visions hack and just made a verbatim copy. However the firmware in the burner detected it in the first few frames while buffering the data (well before a display or recording occur) and just stopped and showed the message. Of interesting note is that I've seen tapes where the previews and adds were fine and macro vision wasn't added till the beginning of the movie itself.

[@drfsupercenter]

Basically all Disney VHS tapes had Macrovision on them (the ones that were released after Macrovision existed, at least) - so your grandma probably "dubbed" a copy of one of those tapes using an old VCR, and that old VCR copied the tape exactly, including the messed-up tracking signal that Macrovision added. Newer machines (including VCRs from after 2000ish) just sense a Macrovision signal and stop you from recording, which is what you ran into. I had a Sony VCR from after DVD came out that would do this, instead of giving you a distorted broken picture, it would simply not record at all.

[@electrictroy2010]

I hope you saved those tapes. They will probably last longer tham the self-erasing DVD-Rs (due to dye fade)

[@Allen-ps6bx]

@@electrictroy2010 I know what you mean. I have some DVD-R's that I made about 10 years ago and when I tried to play one back the other day, the player displayed disc error!

[@Starry_Night_Sky7455]

Was the DVD recorder a later Samsung brand, not that it probably mattered? I experienced this same phenomenon copying from a blank type VHS 📼 tape that had Disney Channel tv recorded movies. I found that to be so weird. Now, if I used a slightly older JVC DVD recorder, everything recorded. Now how did the DVD recorder know that the media copied to a blank VHS was Disney? It would stop the recording. Nothing would copy. Later I just copied directly to my computer. The movies weren't anything rare. I bought the DVDs as Disney released them. I just liked making silly digital 💿 copies of Disney Channel VHS tapes that had that VHS nostalgia look, imperfect lines and lower resolution 😄.

[@stephenroberts2526]

I remember my grandparents getting around Macrovision by playing the tape through a video camera and recording on their VCR. I think they also had an RCA jack in between the two as well. So, it was like this: the camera was connected to the external RCA jacks, which were then connected to the inputs on the back of the VCR. Other than some occasional audio syncing issues, the copies were pretty good.

[@moemarchetti9337]

Love it. Years ago I theorized how this works. Thanks to you, 30 years later, it is confirmed. My first VCR would ignore it and record anything.

[@MalachiTheBowlingGod]

The VHS licensing agreement required manufacturers of VCRs to use compromised AGC circuits that would be adversely affected by the Macrovision signal. This is why TVs are not affected, and it's also why some older VCRs (pre-1984) corrected for Macrovision.

[@jkazos]

My father just picked up a little coax/RCA converter at RadioShack to stick between the VCRs and had no problem with it.

[@ttonyat]

MalachiTheBowlingGod, Yes that's true. I have noticed older VCRs don't care what goes on in the black line between the top a bottom.

[@MalachiTheBowlingGod]

I did a quick search, but couldn't find any mention of this. I remember being astounded at the time, b/c I couldn't imagine such an agreement being able to be enforced over an entire industry.

[@MalachiTheBowlingGod]

BTW, apparently Macrovision doesn't work with Betamax VCRs - only VHS.

[@jameswebb5080]

MalachiTheBowlingGod Also 8mm decks were not affected.

[@DubiousEngineering]

I made a macrovision protection remover out of a triggered timing circuit that puts the transient spike back into the agc system stabilising the picture. I’m happy to send it to you for a wee shoutout if your interested!! I believe it still works!!

[@omegarugal9283]

i used an old mid-80s cheapo VHS player, the AGC was either non functional or didn`t care for the pulses, and the recorded with a modern (by modern i mean mid 90s) VCR to cpycommercial tapes...

[@Mmmm_tea]

alternatively could also run an analogue signal though a pc with composite in / out ports and it should allow VHS backups, unsure if it is due to minor aspect/offset changes or the pc putting its own clean calibration signal, also do people still use vhs? maybe just forget the end part and dump the old "protected" VHS directly to an mp4 file or something.

[@boutcha1]

All that was needed was an adapter from coaxial cable to component cable box for $5 or a simple RF amplifier.

[@rayhunter7371]

Back in the early 90's Macrovision was explained to me that it changed the luminance? signal voltage and messed with the horizontal sync pulse. When the video signal was viewed on an oscilloscope you could see the waveform repeatedly collapsing, then springing back up. I met an electronics engineer around that time who was hell bent on making a Macrovision destroyer. He re-engineered and sold a small box that had a fast AGC circuit and sync pulse regenerator. It had a couple of adjustment knobs for colour and tint. I had a Sony HiFi VCR around that time that was badly affected by Macrovision but when I installed the box between it and my DVD player the recorded picture was almost perfectly stable. I still have that box somewhere.

[@david-spliso1928]

My DVD player in 1999 when hacked via remote control, aswell as becoming region free would strip macrovision so that you could record from disc to tape.

[@hgbugalou]

When I was a teenager this blew my mind and I couldnt understand how it worked.

[@carolalter4456]

+q

[@Mark-Nicholas]

But do you now?

[@oxymoron296]

@@Mark-Nicholas THAT is the question.

[@rickbest7458]

I just had an “ a ha” moment. I now know why my dad always hung on to his older VCR’s , so he could dub hassle free

[@jdonvance]

That's funny. I came to the comments section in order to mention that I suddenly remembered highly valueing my older VCRs. Now I know why.

[@jdonvance]

I can't believe I forgot about how much I valued my older VCRs. I didn't know why they performed better at the time, and just now I suddenly remembered going out of my way to hook up the old dinosaur.

[@jamiemarchant]

Yes, I was affected by DVD Macrovision. When I bought my own personal VCR and DVD player(so I did not have to use the families) and hooked them together I had the problem you talked about. I thought my TV(which only had an RF input) was too old. I returned them and got a TV/VCR instead. When I got a DVD player to go with the TV/VCR years later it had no problem.

[@honestguy7764]

Here in Spain there was a little box called “Regenerador de Sincronismos” that defeated the macrovision signal effectively, but only on a composite level. then, I bought in Germany an ELV device, a better one with Y/C / s-vhs inputs, and then I discovered that a midline stereo Saba VHS recorder, seemed to have macrovision when you were preparing to copy a tape, but disabled the signal when you pressed Rec. I was amazed....

[@KeyRestrictionsSux]

I'm not sure but I do think all manufactures was obligated to make it somewhat impossible or harder to copy protected video's later on. I believe there was a rumour like that back in the days. I never got hold of a syncronizer so I just gave up on copying those movies with protection. So I have no personal experience to back my statement up with.

[@TheGreatBDB]

I had a device called a "Time Base Corrector" (TBC) - it generated a fresh, clean, pure, blank video signal, then mapped the incoming "messy" signal into it. It's mainly used to clean up old video tape signals because tapes can physically stretch, altering the timing signals, throwing off the TV. Oh, there were two things it did NOT propagate to the new signal: analog MacroVision (the kind described in this video) and digital MacroVision. This was 2 bits added to the Closed Captioning signal that indicated a recording's copy-ability: copy never, copy once (the copy would have "copy never" encoded into it), and copy forever. DVD recorders would often have their own TBC's built in, so they would look at these bits to ensure they wouldn't copy commercial tapes.

[@ten10strips85]

I'd forgotten all about macrovision! We had a workaround, but I've forgotten that too. Think it did involve my friend"s dad's old portable unit with the camera and protective leather carry case with shoulder strap for the VCR. Off topic, but a great day was when we accidentally "discovered" video feedback while working on a project for history class. We were doing the sixties and boom, there it was. A little narration, a lot of psychedelic music, the whole class was floored. We were floored. Teacher, floored, so much so that she kept us after class and asked if we really did the video. This was the mid-eighties, and nobody had seen anything like it before.

[@megabojan1993]

I hated macrovision with a passion back in the 1990s. I hated it because I couldn't copy Disney tapes because of it :)

[@BrianNC81]

MegaBojan1993 there used to be a little black box that would strip off macrovision on the composite video (yellow) jack. It was about $30 in the day and it took a 9v battery.

[@megabojan1993]

I wish I had that box back in the day. It would've saved me tons of frustration :)

[@mystica-subs]

I had both my grandfather's 1988 VCR and a defeat device in later years; and the sad part is I made a copy of 1 tape in my entire life. I just thought it was cool. I now own a bluray of Akira, and 3 DVD variants. so I think my one BlockBuster copy is paid for plenty by now.

[@BrianNC81]

MegaBojan1993 it was sold in the back of popular science / popular mechanics magazines and in the "things you never knew existed" catalog. It worked great!

[@AaronOfMpls]

I remember those sort of classified ads (my family subscribed to Popular Science in the 90s), though not for Macrovision defeats specifically. I imagine they were sold by the same people that sold cable TV converters and descramblers. I don't remember Macrovision being a problem though, since we never copied tapes much. The only things I remember us copying were Three Stooges shorts from VHS to Beta, since we had one of each VCR for a while.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

We had issues with Macrovision when we got our first DVD player in 1999. We didn't have a TV with a composite hookup (very common at the time) so we had to run the DVD composite into our VCR and then to our TV over RF. Needless to say until we realized it was Macrovision causing the unwatchable picture we thought our DVD player was crap. We almost took it back but someone educated us and I tried filtering it out by running the DVD composite through our audio receiver. It had three video inputs and one master video out so we ran everything through that and it worked perfectly.

[@25pinjo15]

Hey it's been 6 year , you have taken so much confidence in your video now. Don't give up. I follow you since the beginning.

[@TimurTripp2]

I recall playing a VHS with Macrovision through a more modern DVD + VCR combo and getting a picture with inconsistent brightness. I can imagine this being a problem for those who have old VHS tapes they want to play on a modern digital TV, especially as the tape I was trying to view was of an old documentary that was never officially re-released on DVD or online. Amazing how much engineering goes into something that is just meant to be a pain in the ass...

[@mariusschmitt5855]

Yeah and they dont care about your problems with a legally bought tape but they take your money as always

[@dalethelander3781]

There was a copy protection technology in use before Macrovision in 1985; it wasn't very effective, which sold the studios on Macrovision. It was called Copyguard and it removed two of the three tracking sync pulses from the video out AND the RF out. TVs were fine, but copied tapes were not. However, some tvs were affected, and for those few tvs, manufacturers devised stabilizers which you placed in-line between your tv and the vcr. Twiddle a knob, and your vcrs image was stable. They also had an image enhancement control. Funnily enough, they were effective for copying Copyguard protected tapes and the image enhancer cut down the generational loss. (Not entirely, but acceptably.) You could purchase these items in regular video/home theater (such as that was) retailers in the early 80s; no gray market. Macrovision, however, rendered those stabilizers useless. The reason why Macrovision image stabilizers had to go "underground" (the aforementioned gray market) was because Macrovision not only patented their copy protection tech, they also patented every possible tech that could defeat it. So, anybody devising any tech to circumvent Macrovision could be prosecuted.

[@nickwallette6201]

.... Grrr... Well played.

[@spikester]

They only patented the cheap ways to defeat it, legislation and internal agreements made it so newer VHS HQ units would be affected by Macrovision and manufacturers were no longer allowed to make VHS units that didn't react in the intended manner when recording macrovision signals. This was later enshrined into law by the DMCA.

[@kevinkilburn1317]

I had forgotten about Copyguard! I remember Radio Electronics, a DIY project mag, had a Macrovision eliminator project in it. I ordered a kit, assembled it, and it worked really well. There was an errata published later for something, but mine worked fine.

[@Arcsecant]

It should be possible then to look at the patents and determine what the actual system is.

[@angolin9352]

Another reason video stabilizers had to go underground was Rovi using the US government as their hired muscle. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it illegal to break copy protection for any reason, including to make legal copies or even if the copy protection prevented official copy purchased through official channels from working as intended. It became illegal to make or sell VHS and DVD players that did not implement copy protection schemes, which meant that anyone making one of these devices was forced by law to license this patented technology. There are a many common technologies we use today that are only legal because the Supreme Court had to step in and rule that technology with significant noninfringing uses were exempt from this rule. This should mean that a lot more technologies are legal than actually are, because in practice it's really hard to convince a judge that a technology has significant noninfringing use and, like all aspects of our legal system, you can almost be guaranteed to pick the winner of the court battle by just picking whoever throws more money at their lawyers.

[@valrond]

Very interesting video. I also noticed that my old VHS didn't care about Macrovision either. Nice that bring it up too.

[@flowerpt]

This is the best exposition of Macrovision I've ever seen. Much kudos. The one thing not mentioned is that my TV would bend the top 1/8 of the picture by, say, seven degrees, and the video would be unstable in this region. This was VCR to RCA composite inputs. Magnavox, maybe ... I only remember upgrading to all JVC with time-based correctors later. The effect was prominent on rental-store tapes. Early letterboxing with a piece of cardboard and tape was a sufficient remedy except when it cut the top off the actors' heads. Most movies weren't worth dubbing on VHS but renters got the brunt of it. Thank goodness laserdisc came along for purchases and that laserdisc player owners would never have tolerated an adulterated signal.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

Perhaps your tv had less overscan than most, so was showing parts that weren't normally seen.

[@dlock2k]

You nailed it, including your diagnosis of Macrovision's effect on the VCR's sync circuitry. Back in the late '80s, I worked for a consumer video equipment manufacturer which developed a device to eliminate the Macrovision pulses from the video signal. In the process, we learned a lot about what Macrovision was doing to the video. And from the perspective of that experience, I can say you are dead on. We also discovered that was a good probability that the Macrovision patent was invalid. There was prior art (earlier patents) relating to the NTSC video signal, and how it handled blanking, sync, and AGC. But, when there are deep pockets involved (Disney, Fox, MPAA, etc.) prior art doesn't matter. Capitalism.

[@LiEnby]

the guy behind ImgBurn got sued by macrovision for including a feature in the program to remove macrovision when ripping a DVD

[@TheUglyGnome]

@3:16 (annotation) "Clipping" has always been used as a term to describe (hard) overdriving of analog circuits too. It's not a digital thing only. When digital audio came we started using terms "soft clipping" (analog) and "hard clipping" (digital). Well ... I think I just dated myself.

[@denshi-oji494]

Clipping has always been used with Analog circuitry, usually defined as driving the signal to the point that the signal is driven to the point at or very near the supply voltage at a point in the amplifier circuitry when then leads to the signal being "clipped" since it is unable to go any higher (or lower for negative voltage signals) than the supply voltage rail. When digital came out, it was very strange to hear the term clipping at first associated with the format, I then most often started to hear the term "Digital Clipping" to start being used and in my experiances and associations, is really the most common way I have heard clipping being used for digital, the two words together "digital clipping" since it is a similar situation to the analog, but completely different in why the signal is stopped from extending further to not alter the signal drastically at the point of clipping. Clipping for digital is still referring to the clipped ANALOG equivalent, NOT the actual digital mechanism. In digital the signal running out of valid numerical representations for the signal, having reach a maximum count corresponding to the analog signal would more descriptively be called Digtially Maxed, Limited, or less accurately Truncated data. The other terms however also already had use in analog and DO NOT mean the same thing at all in analog typically, so Clipping is the term still in use today for digital audio and to a lesser extent digital video signals. It ends up like anything else, as definitions and usage change, you will find different groups of people using terms and names that either differ, in usage or in name, often leading to multiple people using the same exact words, yet speaking on different topics! It is really fun hearing people argue about a topic they both believe to be discussing, and as a listener realize that they are really not even talking about the same thing! :-)

[@allanrichardson1468]

Clipping is the key to the noise immunity of FM, which was invented by Edwin Armstrong in the 1920s, but was not suitable for practical use until higher frequencies with more available bandwidth were available just before World War II. The IF (intermediate frequency; there are videos explaining the superheterodyne receiver, which the same Edwin Armstrong also invented, before getting to FM) signal is amplified to a higher than normal amplitude, and a final stage called the "limiter" by Armstrong, basically a clipper, cuts off each positive and negative peak so that there is little or no amplitude modulation from impulse noise that may have been added, such as from lightning, electric motors, automobile engines, etc. Then a special detector called a "discriminator" produces a baseband output proportional to the instantaneous deviation from the center frequency, in both positive and negative directions. The limiter is needed because the discriminator, by itself, detects AM and FM at the same time. Some cheaper FM receivers used a slightly different detector called a "ratio detector," which was inherently much less sensitive to amplitude variations than the discriminator, allowing the limiter stage to be omitted, but it didn't suppress the noise quite as well as the limiter-discriminator combo. So when FM was added to cheap hand held "beach radios," they usually used the RD, but the tuners sold in hi-fi stores used the more expensive L+D. Maybe this channel will do something on FM and FM stereo in the future. FM is inherently a quasi-digital medium, which shows some surprising characteristics, such as "signal capture" that almost seem digital: when two mutually interfering stations differ in strength by more than 3 decibels, or a 2 to 1 power ratio, ONLY the stronger one is detected; and when a station already captured loses strength relative to an interfering station, the receiver locks in the now weaker station until it becomes 3 db weaker. Even the narrow band FM used in two-way radio communications, although missing the wider bandwidth of hi-fi broadcasting, has its advantages over AM and SSB, and this is one of them.

[@qbradq]

Mrs. Frizzle, how does VHS copy-protection work?

[@RickinBaltimore]

Oddity Archive did a good look at this, but you really helped put it all together. Both videos explain this great.

[@Keithustus]

I remember around 2000 making sure to only buy one particular company’s DVD players (can’t remember which now though) as they were supposedly the last big manufacturer that didn’t put any copy protection into their devices. Sharing discs between friends was easy enough so we didn’t need to copy them, but the principle of voting with our wallets has always been important.

[@springchickena1]

I never met a dvd player that refused to play sony architected dvd rips of movies. But if you wanted to play dvd-r or dvd-a you need to be specific.

[@Tomsonic41]

I remember coming across Macrovision back in the age of VHS and getting distorted copies. Many DVD recorders will not show any picture artefacts caused by the Macrovision signal, but there will be a special circuit in there that detects it and aborts the recording process.

[@dailydose-newvideoseveryda2666]

A couple of years ago I bought one of those combo DVD-R and VHS units. I got into my basement and started converting all my old VHS tapes to DVD, once touch recording! It worked great. Then one day I was at a garage sale and found some pre-recorded movies for one dollar on VHS. I thought, "what the heck I have a VCR now, I'll pick a couple of old movies I have never seen." I wasn't even trying to convert them to DVD, I just wanted to watch them. Since the VHS unit is built-in, guess what, couldn't even watch. This video explained what was going on, now I know. How annoying when copy prevention actually stops legit use. Thanks, for the explanation.

[@508phonewiresuckers]

Daily Dose - New Videos Everyday that’s not even possible. I can record anything I want and play anything too. If anything had a copy protection I would just use my copy guard illuminator.The guy in this video is making it seem worse than it was

[@robertgreen7593]

A video on Time Base Correctors would be great. Mainly because I'm interested in VHS preservation for footage that can only be found on VHS tapes. I can't afford the equipment to do it myself, but I still find it interesting. There isn't much clear information on it at the moment. Such as which would be the best VCR to use, best capture device, would a Framemeister do a good job of upscaling, best TBC to use, refreshing the VCR with modern capacitors, finding new heads to replace old damaged ones, cleaning parts, 3D printing damaged cogs, shielding interference, etc. Lots of stuff I'd love to see.

[@vwestlife]

Just get an old Sony MiniDV or Digital8 camcorder with A/V passthrough feature. They're great for transferring analog video into your computer (via FireWire) because they have a built-in TBC, which also happens to make them immune to Macrovision.

[@johnathin0061892]

A prosumer JVC S-VHS like the 9911U has line based TBC and it works fine for almost every tape I threw at it (and even then, I seldom needed any TBC, it would play 98% of all tapes I had, even ones in worn condition perfectly stable where consumer VCRs couldn't, without TBC. Only ones with physical edge damage or were recorded off air with an **extremely** poor signal (with a bouncing picture) required a separate Datavideo full frame TBC. I'd put your money into a VCR like the 9911U first. It will cost you though. Look for a guy named "LordSmurf" on videohelp, he has great stuff concerning capturing VHS to digital.

[@ronwilgenbusch1961]

I use my 9911u for the tbc as well, got it brand new for 200 or so when chain store ultimate electronics was getting vhs machines from shelves. Great investment.

[@ravewulf]

Panasonic AG-1980 S-VHS decks are also really good for this and don't care about Macrovision

[@shabmaster7128]

Would love to see one about cable scrambling.

[@kkendall99]

When I was a teenager I figured out how to turn off the automatic gain control (AGC) on my TV and then fine tune into the real signal. The box the cable company sold you did not de-scramble the signal, that was not possible.

[@kemy6775]

I always wanted to figure it out. It might be similar to this method.

[@xxbondsxx]

Based on what scrambled cable looks like, this is probably the same or similar method? mess with the vertical sync in some way thats reversible?

[@loveableterror]

So, as a former cable tech I could also send him tons of old channel traps that were used for blocking video, either whole hog or just particular subsets based on what was needed. I found it fascinating when we did our "de-trap" project and pulled a ton of these things off

[@NickDalzell]

I could do interesting things with tinfoil and high end cable cords where although the scrambled channel was reversed color, you could still make out what was going on

[@davidwilkerson1904]

We always defeated the copy protection by just re-recording it and it turned out fine after the 2nd recording.

[@shortcat]

maybe if you swap the input and output vcrs the first copy would be good? hard to imagine this wouldn't be the case.

[@TheDukeOfZill]

there was a way around it that didn't involve any fancy descramblers... simply plug the vcr into another vcr into another vcr. i'm not even kidding. this was also effective in cancelling out the signal the cable companies used to turn off certain features in older cable boxes. I had used a cable box that had HBO and a ton of other fancy stations (including adult).. when my bro reconnected it directly to the cable, wondering what the heck I had done, the box lost its features.

[@pengwin_]

where were you 20 years ago! Teenage me would have loved to have known that!

[@bex--]

Wait so just pass the second vcr through a third one instead of connecting it to the tv lol?

[@gillenzfluff8380]

Haha it was even easier than that 2 vcr's and a screwdriver to detune the channel on the back of 1 of the vcr's I worked that out at 12 or 13.

[@sliedogg]

When i was a kid, My dad somehow wired 3 tvs and 2 vcrs to the cable box to get the Disney channel to come it clear. No clue how he figered this out or how it worked.

[@dallase1]

How many people had multiple VCRs? Not many.

[@marktubeie07]

Another excellent episode! Best explanation of the dreaded macrovision I have seen.

[@liammusgrove6334]

"Hooks up DVD player to VCR" VCR: "*M A C R O V I S I O N ! !*" "Aww, but all i want is a VHS of Infinity War!"

[@aetheralmeowstic2392]

Wait, Infinity War DVDs have Macrovision encoding?

[@ADJLfanatic52]

If you watched the video then he said, and I semi-quote, "VHS systems would also encode DVD players if plugged in, also screwing up the video".

[@krzysztofczarnecki8238]

@@ADJLfanatic52 He said that only if requested in the DVD movie. I'm surprised they remembered to put it in just in case there is still one person who wants to tape it.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

Thanos snaps his fingers. Half the image is gone.

[@LiEnby]

@@krzysztofczarnecki8238 just patch the DVD firmware to ignore the request.. or just burn your own copy without it since dvd keys leaked forever ago anyway

[@S1ckhippo]

I finally understood why I was able to copy the protected films. I had an old grundig video recorder from the early 80's and he definitely didn't have the auto adjustment in recording

[@thingsofsuch]

I know that .. ahem ... a friend of my father ... would copy "copy protected VHS tapes in the 1980s ... and all these friends were in the US Navy ... well, let me mention I had (and have) a huge catalog of copied B VHS tapes that were copied using a ... modified ... VCR ... that would counter the macro vision (or any other copy protection) ... I recall sitting over at the friends house while they copied something and my dad and his buddy were tinkering with the VCR doing the copying. So I had good playable copies. That wasn't the only thing though, I honestly didn't know that video games were sold in stores until after we got the NES. My games were mostly all in the Apple II home computer, and there were few bunch of times my dad brought me and my brother to these "conventions" where they would crack game copy protection and trade copied video games. I had everything ... and then some ... and all of this done by a friend of a friend, mind you.

[@notspacekeeper]

I remember as a kid in the 90s, we'd just got access to the internet in my house, and the first thing I used it for was to get no-CD cracks for PC games. I don't even know how I knew those existed, I must have found out somehow. One of my pals had a shelf in his house with what looked like hundreds of tapes, mostly recorded films from TV with the ad breaks cut out by stopping the recording. Problem was, they were always the censored-for-TV versions, so for example I grew up not knowing that Bruce Willis says "motherfucker" in Die Hard.

[@quartz-fm]

in 1999 I had my first personal computer, and a year later I bought an AverMedia TV Tuner and began recording TV programs and transferring all videotapes with films to the computer) and he didn’t care, the recording was with the same quality as on the original VHS

[@kemy6775]

There was also one that made the brightness go in and out without the line jitter. As a kid I wondered why some recorded movies ended up this way. Now I finally know it was all copy protection.

[@EastAngliaUK]

Its cleaver how it worked. and new TVs were still effected. and back then there were no forums or places like youtube showing which videos did not have Macrovision.

[@donbest5024]

we didn't have the internet or computers but I used a fax machine to get video cypher satalite codes to watch TV and other information

[@robertgaines-tulsa]

Copying VHS to my DVD recorder has always been a pain in the butt until I got an image stabilizer. It doesn't produce an image as good an a Macrovision free tape, but Macrovision does put artifacts in the actual video signal. Macrovision was never a good idea to begin with so some distributors refused to use it while others like Disney always insisted on it. Disney knew that your cute little darling was likely to destroy the tape forcing you to buy a new one. That way, you couldn't just make a back up copy just in case that were to happen. It really was a total douche move by Disney. I have more problems with Macrovision on VHS than I ever did with DVD or BD. From what I understand, Microsoft raised a stink about people using Linux watching their DVDs on their computer, and the trade off was to let Linux users rip and decrypt their DVDs onto their hard drive so they can watch them. I don't think the movie industry was too happy about that, but yeah, you can rip all DVDs including those special copy protected discs. I think those Pay Per View DVDs went out of favor because what was the point of them if you could just pop them into your computer to rip them. It's kind of nice storing your DVDs in H264 on a hard drive or a home video server. You don't have to pull them out to play them. Doing that is not video piracy as they would like you to think. If it is for your own private use, that's use fair use. They just want to cash in on making everything pay per view/listen, but that ain't happening. Piracy is copying their discs and selling them especially for profit. That is when you can get into some serious trouble.

[@seanguy7676]

I believe the screen distortion got worse for VCR’s made in the 90’s. Late 80’s seemed to be just the color/audio distortion. This is just from what I remember as a kid. Thank you for making this video! Really helped make sense of an old set of memories.

[@EzeeLinux]

I had access to pro VCRs in a TV station back in the late 80's. Those VCRs had manual video level controls. You could copy anything you wanted! :)

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

Most 70s-80s consumer VCRs have E-E and video level controls but they are in the luminance process board so they are not really user-adjustable.

[@pietschreuder5047]

I remember these weird sounds too when trying copying VHS tapes. In those days, I owned a Commodore Amiga with a Genlock device. If i ran the signal from a protected tape thru the Genlock I got a very good quality and i could enhance the quality a bit by adjusting brightness, contrast and saturation! The genlock replaced the synchronization with it's own. So a good, stable picture!

[@CoolAsFreya]

Very interesting how analog copy-deterants abused the most fundamental structures of how analog signals were synced

[@electrictroy2010]

COMPANIES DO NOT PAY SINGERS OR ACTORS residuals on sales of songs/movies. That’s called stealing wages. Many lawsuits involving billions of dollars have been filed. Funny how these companies are basically pirates themselves (stealing singers/ actors labor)

[@markboldyrev8321]

Seeing how you use v-hold to show how the VBI looks like, I'd suggest you to consider showing a video signal with Line 21 captions, timecode, or teletext too. That would be very interesting IMO. (Also, fun fact: if you disable horizontal sync on a color TV, the color burst will look like a brown bar after the sync pulse).

[@mystica-subs]

My suggestion here would be to, instead of making V-Hold skip, shrink the height of the image that the tube produces. There should be a knob that does this, and then you can see the whole VBI without rolling. It'd be interesting to show it with Closed Captioning, and notice as 'Just before the actor starts talking, look at these flashy bits that are encoding the line he is speaking"

[@Cuperdon]

I tried this back in 2000s trying to copy rental movies. I have always wanted to know why this was happening. Thanks for enlightening me today.

[@redredkrovy]

You just answered a question that I’ve had for over twenty years. I worked at a Computer City store during the CompUSA takeover. During the last week before the new management came in the old management told us we could watch whatever we wanted on the TV system. We had a VCR that fed a signal out to around 20 or so TVs around the store. Normally it would just play a tape advertising ComputerCity but we decided we wanted to watch a movie. So we hooked a DVD player up to it since we had plenty of those and plenty of DVD movies. Unfortunately it wouldn’t work, the MacroVision copyright protection kicked in and messed up the video even though we weren’t trying to copy anything. We fooled with it for about an hour before we finally gave up but I always wondered why it happened. Thanks for finally answering my question!

[@jackalovski1]

I'm 90% sure that my first VCR never had any of this fancy automatic tracking control. This is based on the hours spent laying down in front of it twisting the tracking knob. Also, I remember when I found the remote control for it... it had a 10ft cable.

[@dalethelander3781]

Jackalovski The remote on my first VCR was on a 15-ft cable and was only a switch to control the pause function.

[@johnklumpp7901]

Very early VCRs with wired remote controls only really had 'Pause'. So I mounted my VCR right beside my viewing seat and ran long cabling to the TV signal input. That meant that I could do all - even change casettes - right from my chair.

[@junkendriven]

Excellent video, and thank you for explaining something from my childhood! I always wondered about this and guessed it was some form of anti-copying. I actually defeated it through sheer dumb luck, I found that feeding it through an RCA converter, or any other video converter device (Which now I've seen your information, my assumption is that it 'corrected' the macrovision data, or ignored/stripped it) then it allowed me to playback through another VCR and make "mix" copies of the tapes which was my goal at the time.

[@greylocke100]

Is there a chance you could do a video on the Sony Music "Rootkit" copy protection?

[@nneeerrrd]

++++++

[@oliver24x]

This would be intresting, but more computer nerdy than what he normally does. I hope he does it.

[@vwestlife]

Watch the Oddity Archive's video about copy protection. He covers both Macrovision and the Sony rootkit CDs.

[@Weissenschenkel]

I remember something regarding MJ and people using pencils to cover the outer border of these CDs.

[@shawnerz98]

People complain about the NTSC waveform. Even with it's drawbacks, it has been amazing what we have piled on to the waveform and still make it work!

[@drfsupercenter]

Pretty sure PAL works the same way too

[@stevepence4089]

You are correct on most points in your video. The first tape I saw with Macrovision was Invasion USA with Chuck Norris. When I could not make a copy and being an Engineer the video was immediately analyzed with a scope. The extra false video in the vertical blanking interval was instantly obvious. I designed and sold the first Macrovision defeat circuit as plans and a kit called the Line Zapper. It was sold via mail order with classified advertisements in Radio Electronics and Popular Electronics magazines. It was a simple circuit that stripped the added pulses out of the blanking period and restored it to normal. Televisions were not affected by the added pulses because they universally used Keyed AGC where a pulse from the high voltage output transformer is used to key on an amplifier only during horizontal sync time. The sync pulses never vary in amplitude like the video with scene changes does, so that provided a stable reference for gain control. Early VCR's grandfathered the keyed AGC technique and so were not affected. Later VCR designs dispensed with this more complex circuitry in favor of the simple averaging filter AGC. I also sold a booklet called Video Scrambling Techniques which detailed most of the video protection schemes. Macrovisions defense against the stabilizer products was to patent all possible stabilizer circuits. Once that patent was issued they came after all stabilizer sellers for patent infringement.

[@Mike-hv1uf]

Wow, are you the same Steve Pence that contributed various articles in Radio Electronics from the 80's? I still have a sizeable collection of Popular Electronics/Radio Electronics magazines from when I was in my early teens and still today explore them from time to time. I appreciate the shared knowledge.

[@stevepence4089]

@@Mike-hv1uf Yes, I wrote several articles for the various hobby magazines during this time period, some regarding analog video which I was particularly interested in at the time. Like you I still have an extensive collection of magazines and old IC/transistor data books dating as far back as the 1960's.

[@cessnaace]

I remember that back in the day it was said that you could defeat Macrovision when coping Beta to VHS. Back when Macrovision was new some prerecords, especially those from Disney, would skew the video at the top of the frame when simply playing the tape. Their pulse in the VITC must have been really strong. This, however, did not happen with my Zenith TV with its built in Comb filter.

[@JessHull]

I like how you slipped in a Turn signal caution arrow

[@stevenmannion7479]

I never had any trouble copying videos with macrovision :) and never used a defeat device, but never really knew why it worked (I was only about 14 at the time). I was probably luck enough to use an older video recorder. Interesting, nostalgic stuff and worth a sub, thanks.

[@DrHarryT]

I did buy and still have one of those "black boxes" you put in between two VCR's yellow composite lines to remove Macrovision. I also in about 2000 purchased a GE 9-7885 VHS-HiFi VCR that had a digital still board that could freeze live TV in it as well as built-in Macrovision removal so it could record rented tapes directly from another VCR with no problems...My kids watched a copy of Beetlejuice [Betelgeuse] 187 times every month and still loved it. That thing was a beauty that cost $1000 in that day, you could point the remote anywhere and it would still work. Inside it had over 20 separate circuit boards, even one board that served as a junction board for cables. It was a real monster and I wish I had another brand new one.

[@thevideoman12]

I saw something about this copy protection and was hoping this channel would have a video on it. Beautiful.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

8:48 - I wonder if they ever got sued for breaking someone's VCR.

[@Lightblue2222]

I'm glad he went over that. I noticed how sick my VCR sounded from this too.

[@VulpesFidelis]

Heh. This reminds me of a story involving my late grandfather, and his obsession with tapes. I mean, this man was a hoarder, no reservations. Had bloody mountains of (worthless, home-recorded and/or pirated) tapes in the house… took ages for four men (including myself) to dispose of them all. At one point, a company called Go-Video produced a line of dual-deck VCRs, marketed to people who copied a lot of tapes. Also… some of the early units were unaffected by Macrovision, neither having issues with its main method, nor recognizing it digitally. They became kind of legendary for being able to bootleg rented films and such. So he gets one of these… just barely too late. He got one just after Go-Video had bent the knee, and made the machine affected by Macrovision. He was pissed. So he gets in this huge bru-ha-ha with Montgomery Ward, who sold it. I'm not sure what crazy wizardry he pulled off, but he got a bunch of his money back, while being able to keep the machine. They hated him in return with a passion I've not seen in years.

[@compzac]

I actually dont know if its the same go video that my old combo unit was, but I had a VCR DVD combo unit that weirdly could record the DVD to tape I had never seen this and thought wait this cant be legal, and its like either the company didn't know or didn't want you to know just it was a rather herky jerky way to get the machine to do it, you basically had to disconnect the front composite connection, put the VCR into Line 2 (Front Connector) switch it back to DVD start the DVD playing, press DVD/VCR mode then press record the video would pop up and it would be recording, only issue is that when doing this all the DVD functions would stop working, but the DVD kept playing, IDK if it was a glitch or hack or whatever but my Later Samsung combo unit wouldnt allow this to happen, and in such weirdness no macrovision weirdness would happen during or after recording.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Shameful you disposed of all those tapes. I assure you had you put them up on eBay, Craigslist or Freecycle, someone would have been overjoyed to have them and there would be that much less toxins in your local landfill.

[@a2pabmb2]

People might pirate our videos, so lets make it so our videos might destroy our paying customers' VCRs. That'll teach 'em.

[@jamesmurphy5751]

This bought back a lot of memories! I remember buying a little box that created a new sync pulse so I could copy films...I probably still have it somewhere!

[@marioelenes5808]

This explains so much. Back in the day when we got DVD, we first hooked it to the front input in the TV, to play with the new shiny. Then dad tried getting it to go through the VCR so everything was neat and easy to use... And signal went to hell. We always assumed it was that our VCR pass through had an issue, so DVD went in front.

[@performa9523]

I would love to see some "period" aftermarket defeat devices in action.

[@QuantumRift]

I still have my my Macrovision stripper box I paid $40 several decades ago.... I can STILL merrily dupe VHS tapes.....

[@NESNerd427]

3:55 hey look, it’s that “scary” BBC logo!

[@NathanPlays395]

Not scary. At all

[@crazyivan030983]

I got this vcr connected to this vcr connected to this TV connected to this microwave oven connected to this dishwasher connected to this vacuum cleaner connected to this coffee maker. Greetings from Poland :) GREAT CHANNEL :) always a little celebration when new video is published :)

[@antonmansa]

Great video! Really takes me back! I used to have a early 80s Hitachi top loading, wired remote, VHS deck which had a built in Video Stabilizer and it worked very effectively at defeating macrovision copy protection. I couldn't believe it was even allowed to be available in the deck. My brother bought the step-down version of my recorder the same year, both models came out at the same time, only his didn't have the built-in video stabilizer and sure enough was not immune to macrovision copy protection. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane!

[@joechief2456]

I've often heard that copying media to make backup copies is legal and that copy protection is an inconvenience, but it's actually far worse - because the DMCA bans DRM circumvention *for any reason* it's not legal to circumvent DRM even for otherwise lawful purposes, so even though both trivial and ethical to do so it's still technically not legal to backup your DVD collection even today. It's also not legal to circumvent DRM in order to use multimedia for fair use purposes or to modify media to improve accessibility. But at least big time producers get to keep themselves warm at night with the delusion that they're preventing piracy all while the only people actually affected are otherwise legal users who may even stand to increase popularity of the original content.

[@newstarcadefan]

Which circumvents the Sony Decision of 1980...which is messed up.

[@MayContainJoe]

However people who never bought original media were never affected by copy protection. Their pirate copies were always free from anything cumbersome and play back fine on every current and future device.

[@nickwallette6201]

Lobbies. Ain't it grand.

[@mikeangelo6667]

I use DVD Shrink. It copies the image file of a DVD and strips off the copy protection.

[@zwz.zdenek]

There's no DMCA in my country, it's still legal to make backups. Also, our Pirates Party has 10% in the Parliament!

[@video99couk]

I think Macrovision was almost as likely to stop someone legitimately watch a video/DVD as it was able to prevent copying. It was a foul thing. Fortunately it only affected VHS (which stinks). My Hi8 deck didn't care about it any more than did my Beta Hifi. Nor did a Philips VHS Hifi. But since a VHS to VHS copy is so shite anyway, Macrovision wasn't really necessary. I believe Macrovision is still used: broadcast transmissions via Sky in the UK cannot be readily recorded on a JVC DVD/hard disk PVR combo, the JVC detects the signal and says something like "Cannot Copy".

[@momzilla9491]

Cable Companies put a "Stop Passthrough" on any channels you don't pay for. I am still able to use my 2002 Sony VCR/DVD-R to record Standard Definition cable TV. I can't record HD TV on my VCR. You won't be able to record High Definition TV programs unless you are also paying for the Cable Company's preferred home-use recording device. Of course you can substitute that preferred recording device out of the equation and record on any device you would like to use. Smile.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

Sky is cancer anyway...

[@edstar83]

When I was 8 I used to set up my dads huge VHS video camera in front of the tv to record movies protected with Macrovision.

[@tashalynn29]

Lol. Desperate times /Desperate measures

[@dirkgriggs3353]

This has to be the greatest discussion of Macrovision anywhere. Apparently, there were some early versions of Macrovision that used constant strength pulses whereby basic stabilizers could boost the dark and murky signal into almost normal. As you noted too, the vertical sync pulse was modified thereby explaining the rolling image and/or distorted (hi fi) audio since it is recorded along with the video although the linear audio would not be affected. Many older models ignored the signal (some as far as 1991 or thereabouts). Some VCR models (RCA for example) ignored the Macrovision signals up until about 1997-98 until the DCMA mandated that the signal be honored. Also, many older machines did not behave differently if you pressed record, i.e. if the signal passed through correct, it would record correctly.

[@athaphian]

When I was a kid, we had two VCRs at home, one of them was an older model that could copy tapes without problem. We used it regularly to copy rented videos. That allowed me as a kid to rewatch those 80s movies as much a I liked :).

[@spacepirateivynova]

DRM has never been 'clever'. It always gets subverted. Usually on day 1. Even with Denuvo now.

[@callmefox630]

Cries in Anno 1800

[@pootispiker2866]

I say DRM is a good thing. It gives pirates a better experience without it!

[@Blaze6108]

Games are actually a very curious case because they are the only media for which "perfect" piracy protection is theoretically possible (keyword: theoretically). Every other media (non-interactive) inevitably incurs into the analog hole, where even the best copy protection may be avoided by simply pointing a camera at the monitor.

[@Dorky_Designs]

Yea DRM only ever stopped the legitimate owners from making legal copies because they don't know how. For pirates it's just part of the game, and the fun part at that.

[@CheapBastard1988]

HDCP 2.2 has been pretty problematic though.

[@hackerinsidetm4271]

Macrovision: I’m able to prevent copying of tapes! I protect copyrights. Also Macrovision: I’m defeated by an older VCR teehee

[@PhirePhlame]

My own VCR, a moderately older unit from sometime in the 90s, always has its auto gain control running, as I found out the hard way when I tried to consolidate my inputs by running my DVD player through said VCR.

[@PhirePhlame]

Alright, so I did some testing with a childhood DVD print of Robots, by Blue Sky (I don't have two VCRs). On my Bentley portable B&W the brightness oscillation didn't show as much, but that didn't matter because the "dark" phase somehow caused the picture's *_H-sync_* to fly out of control! Playing it back on my RCA TruFlat, the colors are striped and the brightness oscillates as expected...and that's really it; the picture's perfectly stable there.

[@Cheva-Pate]

In 1989 i bought a filter you connected between the VCR’s and then the problem was gone, perfect copy’s!

[@peterk7931]

I remember discovering this when I was a kid. Thank you for finally explaining it.

[@tartrazine]

3:19 clipping DOES occur in analogue systems.

[@stevesstuff1450]

Certainly does! It was always referred to as 'clipping' back in the late 70's/early 80's if an amplifier was fed too high-a signal and started distorting, or even when recording a cassette too far into the 'red'....

[@garybarnes4169]

Specifically, if you drive an amplifier beyond its maximum voltage output with a pure tone input for instance, what you see on an oscilloscope trace of the output is the sine wave with its peaks visibly clipped off.

[@VintageTechFan]

@@stevesstuff1450 I've seen it being referred to as that in literature from the 1930s.

[@DougWinfield]

Technically that's distortion or oversaturation, not clipping.

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

This guy didn't realize you could rent copy-protected VHS and transfer them to SuperBeta. These youngsters who were not around didn't realize this.

[@derekheeps1244]

It worked on any Betamax machine , or Video-8 or Hi-8 deck .

[@bunnybreaker]

Killing it as always. Nice work dude.

[@davincent98]

Disney was notorious for this. I even tried watching a Disney VHS on my HDTV, and it did that.

[@danieldaniels7571]

davincent98 I used to have a smaller HDTV in my daughter’s bedroom that had that issue with macrovision encoded tapes. Could only play really really old Disney tapes on it.

[@philc2729]

Great presentation as always. Thanks for holding on to old examples of technology and investing so much time in explaining many of last generation's technology.