VHS, Macrovision, and the WD TV Live Hub (including a sprinkle of Archos 605)

[mike27oct]

Interesting conversation here, and reminds me that I have a small Laserdisc collection, and as many of us know, these had no copy protection.  I also purchased a Toshiba DVR a few years ago, so I have copied some of the Laserdiscs to DVD (then to an ISO file for the Live Plus).  It couldn't be easier to do, and they come out looking and sounding exactly like the original Laserdisc.

I have transferred some of my own-made VHS and S-VHS tapes to the DVR.  Again, successfully. 

I don't believe I have transferred any of my commercial VHS tapes this way.  Before I try it, does anyone know if I would be successful or unsuccessful doing this?  (I don't want to lug out the VCR and tapes unnecessarily.)   :-)

[richUK]

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mike27oct wrote:

Interesting conversation here, and reminds me that I have a small Laserdisc collection, and as many of us know, these had no copy protection.  I also purchased a Toshiba DVR a few years ago, so I have copied some of the Laserdiscs to DVD (then to an ISO file for the Live Plus).  It couldn't be easier to do, and they come out looking and sounding exactly like the original Laserdisc.

I have transferred some of my own-made VHS and S-VHS tapes to the DVR.  Again, successfully. 

I don't believe I have transferred any of my commercial VHS tapes this way.  Before I try it, does anyone know if I would be successful or unsuccessful doing this?  (I don't want to lug out the VCR and tapes unnecessarily.)   :-)

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There is no problem doing it except for the possible copy protection as already mentioned.

[chip_r]

The commerical tapes will likely have the protection and will not copy with consumer DVRs.  As an FYI, the altered sync is recorded on the source tape and the analog stream is just faithfully sent to your TV during playback. The TV can tolerate this poor sync but a receiving (recording) VCR can't as it needs a clean sync to write to tape. 

Your DVR as a recorder obviously doesn't use tape but needs to mimic this behaviour. For the geeky types ...

All modern digital capture systems (DVRs, capture cards, and digital TVs) have time base correction (TBC) to some degree. It's required because the VCR tape speed can very. So you don't get a consistant  29.97fps for mechanical reasons. In the old CRT days, the syncs were used to trigger the horizontal and vertial timing of the electron gun. You didn't really perceive those variations but they were there.

In digital systems (DVR and TV), the incoming analog signal needs to be time-aligned (moved) to match the receiver for display or encoding. So the syncs are used for each frame during the digitizing process. Modern TVs use more information in the frame to synchronize so the altered sync isn't an issue. Anyway, you'd expect your old VHS tapes to work on your 65" plasma TV.

A DVR or capture card also does TBC but it needs to detect the altered syncs as described by the Macrovision spec. If found, the capture device has several choices: 1) Just record a blank screen. 2) Record but render the recording useless (flip colors, remove sound, etc). 3) Display a message it can't record due to protection reasons. The second and third options are usually taken as a blank screen could  result in customer service calls to the DVR or capture card maker.

As a final note, the TBC for consumer devices is done in hardware as part of the digitizing process so there are no "magic" software fixes internal to capture devices. Software may "report" protection but the underlying TBC is done by electronics. They're just built that way for compliance. Electronics makers can't leave an internal back door as they'd be sued out of existance by studios. External professional TBCs as someone mentioned can provide clear outputs but that's for studio purposes. Obviously studio use is OK as they're keenly aware of copyright ownership. The whole Macrovision thing is to prevent "casual" copying.

[richUK]

The best thing to do is to hook your video up to your DVD recorder and try it. It will either work or not. If it does not work and you really want to DVD the tape then you will have to buy a box which fits between your video and DVD recorder. These can be reasonably cheap or incredibly expensive depending on where you buy them. Basic Macrovision is not really that technical and can be easily defeated on a Video tape.