4 out of those 5 ICs are 4000-series logic chips. That's because all it did was allow the signal through from input to output until it detected the start of the vertical blanking pulse, then it would switch the output to deliver its own, clean blanking pulse for the correct amount of time before switching back to the input signal right at the end of the vertical blanking pulse. In other words, instead of trying to remove the copyright protection inserted into the blanking pulse, the device would simply remove the blanking pulse completely and substitute its own, clean blanking pulse. One or more of those transistors (Q1, Q2, etc) would have been used as the switching/buffering circuit, switched on or off by the logic chips. 4013- Dual, D-type flip-flop (probably part of the switching circuit but could be part of the timing circuit) 4025- Triple, 3-input NOR gate (part of the switching circuit) 4040- 12-stage binary ripple counter (part of the timing circuit) 4081- Quad, 2-input AND gate (part of the switching circuit) MC14538BCP- Dual, Precision Retriggerable/Resettable Monostable Multivibrator (part of the timing circuit) Good times, when removing copy protection was simple.
I am old enough to remember when movies became "priced to own" as they were called. I think WB was the first or one of the first studios to charge $24.99 for certain newly released films. The first one I got was in February 1990. I was a sophomore in high school. Between classes, I called my older sister at work and begged her to stop at the mall on her way home and buy me Lethal Weapon II on video. Now, my sister knew how much I loved movies and since I never made such a request before, she bought it for me! I had that tape for 20 years. Later that year, my brother taught me how to hook up our two VCR's to transfer videos. Then, for 20 bucks, I bought a little box called "The Terminator 2" (I shit you not) which bypassed the copy guard put on the rented tapes. For the next 10 years, I used it to duplicate videos every Tuesday when the new movies came out. Good times. (I really have to start watching the videos BEFORE I comment) That said, when I switched over to DVD's in the late '90s/early '00s, I would rent DVD's and transfer them to video. I remember when Die Another Day was released, it had a copy guard on it. Skeptical, I plugged in my T2 and it actually removed it!
The primary use of this device was really to stabilize picture of VHS tapes with loss of synchronization. And yes, Macrovision override was the secondary use :D
Video 2000 machines were not affected by Macrovision. They copied VHS tapes perfectly. The copy protection was recorded onto the V2000 which meant that the good V2000 copy could not be used to copy back to VHS. My local video shop hired VHS machines as well as tapes, delivering and collecting them. I had a good collection of films on V2000. I think the video shop was copying VHS to V2000 for their V2000 rental tapes as they were just in plain boxes.
When DVDs first came out. Macrovision wrecked havoc on the legitimate use of DVD for a lot of people. I'll explain. DVD players, when they came out, did not have an RF output on them, only audio/video. But most TV's back then still only had an RF input only on them. So most people would try to use their VCR as a RF modulator. Make sense, RIGHT? Well here's the problem. Most VCR's would still react to the Macrovision signal from the DVD player. Even though you were NOT trying to make a copy of the DVD onto a VHS tape. This forced a lot of people to have to go out and buy a separate RF modulator just so they could hook their DVD player to their TV.
"TV's back then still only had an RF input only on them"? I don't know where things were as you say, but at least in Europe Scart conectivity certainly predated the DVD format launch by ages, and well, the good old composite rca conectors are almost as old as the sun!
All the tellys I have owned since the mid 80`s have SCART sockets on them allowing composite s-video and rgb input. You would have to go way back to the early 80`s to struggle to find a telly without a/v inputs. This is in the U.K, maybe the U.S. was different.
Yeah the US never got SCART for some reason, or RGB for that matter outside of VGA and a few specialized applications, until HDMI assimilated everything we used RCA jacks in some form or another for everything except for digital audio. And RF was still the main way to go in the US until the 2000s if you didn't buy higher end televisions.
You really don't know do you? It had absolutely nothing to do with RF or how you connected your VCR to another. Macrovision effected the AGC or automatic gain control, which is the line that you see when your horizontal control is off just slightly and your picture starts to roll. I could get technical about how it was encoded on the tape but don't think you would understand
@mark: Actually he is right. Using a vcr as a pass-through for a dvd player without rf output would trigger Macrovision. Same with those combo tv/vcr`s that were popular a decade or so ago. Later vcrs had a flag in their firmware that would detect and activate macrovision if it even detected a protected signal (like the dvd being routed through the vcr`s rf modualtor). So, yeah, dont be such a dick eh.
I still have two machines that do this, a GTH ACE standard convertor and a CopyMate video copy enhancer. I still use the ACE. Back in the day, we used JVC SVHS VCRs, made perfect copies, in fact even though Im in Scotland I have that NTSC JVC VCR seen in this video.
The way we got around macrovisioning Was we would 1st try VHS to VHS And if it was macrovision we would hook up my beta recorder , recording from vhs to beta the scrambling wouldn't affect the process.
I used the old Sony Betamax SL-5400 to get around the Macrovision. What I did was I connected the video out of VHS player that plays the tape to video in of Sony Betamax SL-5400 and the video out of Betamax to video in of another VHS that records the content. But on the back of Betamax there is a PCM switch turn it off but you loose the closed captioned. If you don't turn off the PCM the Macrovision is still there. I tried this same trick many years later when DVD was introduced but didn't work. DVD Macrovision is too strong.
I remember my Dad using the Video Stabilizer to fix a fuzzy VHS of Tom and Jerry we rented from Blockbuster. We connected it to our first VCR, which was the external recording unit from an 80s personal camcorder. Later in highschool, I found out that the video stabilizer could still be used to circumvent copy protection on DVD players!
Back in 1986, BACK TO THE FUTURE was the first movie I tried to copy. From my old sears Beta machine to my new Sanyo Betacord. I had no idea why the picture was going bright to dark. Boy, does your video bring back memories!
Heh childhood me trynna copy the public library simpsons ocmplete sixth season dvds on a dvd player onto a vxr an noticing when not playing bakc but merely passthrough to tv set itd become darkened but still watchabke but when played back by the tape to see what I got fwiw it was merely static.
1982 I was able to copy Poltergeist with some cables just messing around. I was able to do this. Then I tried copying a movie called The stunt Man from 1980 and I got the copy guards Worst picture I've ever seen.
I remember our video store offered insurance for tapes! They had a sun-melted tape on the counter with a price tag of $89.99 as a warning. I knew a lot of people with two VCRs, who dubbed tapes like this all the time. They had full shelves of pirated tapes.
There must be several generations of macrovision. I remember copying tapes and having them look like the scrambled premium cable channels. Yours looks pretty watchable. If that was all you had, you could deal with that. Also, my dad had some kind of special cable box that unscrambled those channels, probably around 1986 or even earlier. Would that be something similar to this?
SOURCE = Player VCR RECORDER = Recording VCR 1. Audio Out (Red & White) on SOURCE Player to Audio In on RECORDER 2. Video Stabilizer Out (Yellow) to Video In (Yellow) on RECORDER 3. Video Stabilizer In (Yellow) to SOURCE Player (Yellow) Out Does this sound correct? Thanks!!!!!
"The sound quality was fine, it didnt effect the soundquality" Sounds exactly like south parks version of the old guy in pet semetary. Hes in the aspen episode. 4:12
Had to use one of these as a kid because I had a 13 inch VHS TV combo unit, but the VHS didn't work. Even when not recording, macrovision engaged on external VCRs.
I paid $20 for mine back in 1985. I still have it even though it will never be used again. I copied 100s of movies with this device at the added cost of a 9 volt battery.
I wish I knew about this thing back in the day!! So many tapes I couldn't copy because of Macrovision. It was always a gamble, too: I'd start recording with my fingers crossed, and quickly enough I'd discover which tapes were copy protected. After a while, I pretty much knew which tapes / companies were protected and which ones weren't. MCA Videocassette Inc. weren't, and neither were the early MCA Home Video tapes (up until '85 or so). MGM/UA in those big book boxes were fine, as were the early Warner Home Video clamshells. Media, Prism, U.S.A. Home Video were all good. I tell ya, I had become a pro at knowing which ones were gonna copy, and which ones weren't, lol!
In the mid 90's I would rent the tape, make a copy onto the cheapest blank VHS I could find, disassemble the cassettes and literally swap the reels out, then take the crap one back to blockbuster. I must have done it over 100 times and never got caught.
Why do some people end up with a much less stable image when Macrovision is in effect? For example, Technology Connections's video on Macrovision showed crazy effects, such as loosing sync?
Those look more like 90s machines. I remember when we bought our 1st DVD player from Sears in 2001, we got a similar looking Sony VCR that was displayed and clearanced tagged for around $200 in the same transaction.
ive got an CRT Television that has a fit over HDCP so i do a very simular thing to use many of my things with that television There were televisions that also had trouble with macrovision too
I had a lump in my throat when you started talking about the 80s, simpler happy times, many people I knew and loved are no longer here yet I am still here and just going through the motions
I've got a problem, one VHS (1998) at almost the end of the recording, it starts to have some noise in the image, then the sound starts to pitch up and image is having more noise and finally black and white image with high pitch sound and the end (with a drastic pitch down and image turns into "snow noise')
Two great VCR’s there 👍. Oh how I hated Macrovision as much as I hate regional encoding on DVD’s today 😡. I have a Region 2 DVD player to watch my British programs that aren’t available in Region 1.
My understanding was that Macrovision altered the sync signal in such a way that a second generation "copy" would just not work. Probably unknown to anyone but Betamax users, these movies would copy just fine to a Betamax machine. It was because Sony regenerates the sync signal before recording. The only movie I had trouble copying was Forbidden Planet in which there was a shift in the vertical scan. I originally had a pair of Betamax machines, but bought a VHS unit to play rental movies, and if I chose, I could make Betamax copies.
Nice video, but Macrovision was not nearly as common as you claim. As someone who worked in a video store from 1988-1999 and made countless copies, I guarantee that nowhere close to 99% of tapes were protected. In fact, less than a third did. That number decreased even further as second prints came out and the extra money wasn't invested in protecting later prints.
7:47 I have two of these RX-11 devices; I loved them. I always got a kick out of the fact that they "talk out of both sides of their mouths" on the labeling of this device --- it first says the whole huge "WARNING" spiel, yet immediately afterwards shows you the diagram with the unit hooked between the "VCR PLAY" and "VCR RECORD" units, obviously being used to illegally duplicate movies. :P :D
There were some movies such as "Batman" and "The Cotton Club" where the Macrovision was so strong that it effected the original. So Macrobusters made better copies than the original. Another trick was to rent the movies on VHS and copy them to Beta . No box needed because Sony never bought into the Macrovision scheme.Those were the days.
Holy shit, they were never that expensive in the UK, wow. I remember having a copy of Toy Story in 1996 from one of my Dad's friends. It was grainy and the audio was crap, barely audible even. I assume it had some kind of copy protection like this one. I even remember some Disney VHS's having intros before the main feature, that told the owner that they can't copy (this) VHS tape(s) with quality, even had a kid voice actor complaining about the quality. Just like I complained when I was 6/7 X).
I had (and still do have) one of these and it worked quite well stabilizing my video signals. How I got mine was funny, though. I’m looking at the ads for things like this in the back of Video Magazine or Video Review, whatever I was getting at the time. It’s about 1989, 1990. I look at the ads selling these boxes and realize the address you could send a check to to get one was less than a mile from my place. I called the number, asked if I could come by and pay cash. They said sure, come by. It was just a dingy little call center, 3-4 people answering phones and stuffing boxes in to envelopes. Ok the story isn’t funny but I’ll bet none of you got yours that way, huh?
My local rental video store was a knock off shop that used to copy all their movies from blockbuster(wasn't one in my neighborhood) without any protection, i used to think VHS was just crap quality.
I had and still have a Toshiba VCR, it was a multi system vcr that actually removed macrovision when copied tapes. I used to make copies for friends because nobody else could do it.
Can confirm. Those suckers work like a champ! They do indeed re-generate the video signal. I had one that used a DC adapter and a red LED to signal that it was getting power and working. The 9V battery model is genius. They paid for themselves after one or two tapes back in the day. They also made you popular with friends and family who wanted a favor. : )
My Old Man had the Star Wars movies in his collection. He probably utilized one of these devices to get a decent copy. As a kid, I pulled those tapes out and loaded them into the VCR countless times. : )
I bought one of these in late 2012 on eBay for $35, worth every penny! I had some Disney tapes at the time that haven't got released to DVD, and this worked just fine for me! Now I use this to stabilize picture when digitizing tapes. Here's a probably stupid question: Does this have a Time Base Corrector? Just curious. Thanks!😁🖒
I also had a Video Stabilizer unit which worked great. In a later period I bought an Samsung 'Worldwide video recorder'. This baby could copy anything I threw at it.
1:10 Try $100-150 ('85 dollars, $230-350 now). The term at the time was ''priced for rental''. If you didn't return the tape or destroyed it that's what they would bill your credit card for. Very few new releases were even available in general retail, most tapes that were were either old (pre-1950) movies or exercise videos.
Disney was best known for VHS tapes that contains Macrovision technology. I have a ton of Disney tapes that all have Macrovision process to prevent copy protection.
An english electronics -magazine had in 80s how to make one, made one and it worked perfectly. Only that my main videorecorder was sony betamax, that had no problems with macrovision. Copied even the signal perfectly.
Or you could use an older VCR from about the late 70s or so, It wasn't all that uncommon to see them even in 86 and they would just record the Macrovision without any problems! Sometime, I want to test all of my VCRs for that ability to record even on a Macrovision signal!
@@JustinGittings Oh, I didn't know that later VCRs like that wouldn't have problems like that as well! Although I'm pretty sure late VCRs like that are pretty few and far between
Apparently 8mm tape was impervious to Macrovision, as I was able to copy hundreds of VHS tapes direct to 8mm (normal and Hi-8) without any problems or signal degradation.
@hillbilly tech: I think it messed with the auto gain control rather than the tracking, hence the messed up colours and brightness. Older VCRs just didn't have AGC. I had a vcr without auto-tracking and macrovision still worked to mess up copies no matter what you did with the tracking knob.
NO WAY did a VHS tape of a movie in 1986-88 cost 75 dollars... not sure what the hell you are smoking or where you bought them (or both), but they were around 30-50 bucks... depending on availability and we got our 4 head hifi Mitsubishi VCR in 1988 for 299.99 (around 300 bucks).
Macrovision Copyguard technically falls under "copy deterrent" due to making the copy unbearable rather than wholesale preventing it from happening. At least, it does when making a _VHS_ copy. DVD recorders react in a way that _does_ make it a full copy protection scheme, however, by refusing to function upon detecting those signal pulses.
My method was to take apart the play VCR and tweak the video gain a little higher than normal. The AGC of the record VCR would fix the increased signal level yet still keep the colorburst and sync pulses at the correct size. Bypassed most of the early versions of MacroVision.
In Russia we wached many in defect colours on the latest soviet "Rubin" TV, and many people wached in black and white becouse our soviet TVsets understanded only SECAM. I did not recognize Marty in good quolity, becouse in poor quolity it was not able to see that the actor is much older than his hero.
+databits great video i order one of these's Digital Video Stabilizer one with S-Video and Composite Video so i can copy most of my old vhs tapes to copy to my dvd recorder and than save them on laptop or on my Android Huawei smartphone. here's the kind i order www.ebay.com/itm/281932510322?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Not quite. Macrovision's 1st-gen copy protection caused involved encoding intense signal spikes in the vertical blanking interval. On the playback deck, this would be ignored and playback would be just fine, but the automatic gain control circuit in the recording deck would try and compensate for those signal spikes, causing the brightness changes throughout playback. Didn't screw with the sync pulses, though; you can still get a coherent picture without lost sync.
Back in the 80s and 90s as a child. I could only record my favourite movies from free to air TV channels. But it wasn't until 1993 when I got my first Hi-Fi VCR.
So, it looks like these are fairly simple. I only have one tape I want to copy better. I was able to copy it by chaining a video to vga converter to a pc to tv converter, but, the quality is reduced. Of course the quality of the tape is not very good to begin with. Certainly, I would not spend more than $40 for one of these devices and I happen to have a bunch of electronic parts lying around. I have all sorts of parts including high speed logic gates and counters to video multiplexer/amplifier chips. I guess I should be able to make a device like this easily. Maybe I will make a project of it soon.
The best way around macrovision was to buy a GO VIDEO Dual Deck VCR...which I still own one....they had circuitry inside known as AMERICHROME which defeated macrovision.
Hey man, great presentation. I was wondering can I use that video stabilizer as TBC (Time base corrector). Will it fix the dropping frame issue of digitilazing the VHS tapes to my computer. Do you have any expirience of that?
And how did you come across such a device? - you'd go to your local 5 and dime and pick up a magazine like Premiere or Movieline and check out their classifieds. I picked up one in the early 90's..As a side note, the first movie I saw with macrovision I believe was 1984's "The Cotton Club"
Certian older vcrs from the 90s when you are playing something macrovision protected in general can already show the macrovision pattern despite no recording in progress. For example, early 90s panasonic vcrs or mid 90s-early 2000s Funai Vcrs.
HI AP - I just received my Digital Video Stabilizer (just like in this video dem) and there is no S-Video Cable In or Out connection. None of the DVS demonstrated on RU-vid show a S-Video Cable either --- SAD!
The worst here was to see how lobbyism and lawmaking for corporate interests work in the US. Macrovision used a flaw on consumer grade VCRs, cheap simple automatic gain control for the recording of the video signal. Getting this cheap AGC out of phase was easy. Professional VCRs never used that kind of AGC, but a more sophisticated one inkl better time base correction. As those components began to get cheaper consumer VCRs contained them too and Macrovision didn't work anymore. What did the content mafia do? They let lawmakers pass laws that every VCR must respect macrovision and that flaw must be implemented, actually breaking the technical specifications of VCRs. Engineers had to hit their head onto the table. And they did the same AGAIN with the DMCA. It's especially the content industry which has a tight grip on lawmakers because they also own the media / television/ newspapers. So politician's tend to do everything they want to not get negative press.
there is a error, when you said 99% of Hollywood USED MACROVISION. WB NEWLINE PARAMOUNT and MGM AND SONY (Columbia Tri-star) where the only ones that did not use the macrovision on there tapes. I would know because those you could copy just fine from any VCR With out the need for a Magnavox VCR Hi-FI STEREO OR NOT or SIGNAL DESCRAMER that you show off. it was UNIVERSAL, DISNEY (That would be Miramax, touchstone and Dimension Disney had a lot of them which was under bevena vista entertainment) AND FOX, Liongate (which was knowed as lionmark) So you would say about 50% of Hollywood at the time used the macrovision on VHS but not everybody did. it was not tell DVD where everybody Did Macro vision Level 3 Copy protection. the reason why WB, NEWLINE, PARAMOUNT AND MGM AND SONY Never did copy Protection on vhs. They said it would mess up Picture quality of there blockbuster hits and They did not care of you made a copy for a friend or If you rented it From a store to copy it. Those 5 Hollywood studios did not care. How ever UNIVERSAL DISNEY (with it sub division studios) AND FOX AND LIONGATE That wanted to enforce a way where nobody could copy there work on to a other tape or else where. Most people did not know that you could buy a Philips VCR or a MAGNAVOX VCR to Get around what Universal Disney FOX AND LIONGATE where doing. But I would recommend your way.
As per Wikipedia, Video2000 was designed for the PAL colour television standard (some models additionally handled SECAM), distribution of Video 2000 products began in 1979 exclusively in Europe, South Africa and Argentina and ended in 1988. European VCRs have a SCARP connector that we don't have in North America.
UUUUuuuhh, In 1985 (if you were even lucky enough to have a VCR) there was no Blockbuster. It was usually "some guy" that forked over an absurd amount of money to get the tapes in. Then, you had to "belong" to a club ( whatever bullshit idea they had to make money on top of money), which ran about $500 a year. Then, adding insult to injury, the rentals were $30 a night With a $200 (we'll call it) "damage deposit". Literally, I remember congress having to step in and cut these pricks off at the knees for their predatory behavior.
In 1983 (i was still at school and only 15 years old and am from the uk) my aunt gave me a front loading phillips vcr that would record anything thing you threw at it even if it had macrovision, i never understood how it worked as it was just a bog standard vcr, it didnt have any hacks added to it. I had that vcr for over 16 years as i used it for my main play machine as well and it never broke down until finally one day i started to get into these newfangled dvd disk things. I found out later that my parents had thrown it away when they cleaned out the garage, I still think about that vcr all this time later where i would spend many a night copying the latest big blockbuster movies, ahh the good old days before i was forced to become an adult and get a job so i could pay all my hard earned money out on bills etc.
I found one of these stabilizer units, new old stock, never been used. I connected it as shown here and in the diagram on the case, and it does not work. It records, but all that is recorded is a blank screen with no sound or picture. Does it possibly only work with certain types of copy protection? The tape I'm trying to copy dates from 1986, and without the stabilizer I get the error message saying it is copy protected.
I didn't see macrovision show up in Australia until 1992-93 with some cbs fox ex rental tapes like White men cant jump. What I found back in the 90's was that by connecting the rf antenna cable from the wall to the first vcr then to the second vcr then to a video game console rf switch box that it got rid of all the dark/light flickering and then a digital signal stabiliser was all that was needed to get crisp copies. Not that I ever sold copies. Later 90s/early 2000's VCR's and DVD players supposedly had macrovision integrated circuits inside them that over rid even the stabiliser boxes ability to clean the image up and would instantly stop recording when it had a macrovision protected tape or disc in it and record was pressed on the second unit whether a dvd recorder or vcr
I don't know about where YOU live, but, around here, Blockbuster only charged a buck or 3 to rent and maybe as much as $20.00 to sell a movie. At other stores, you might be able to buy a movie for $5.00 to $10.00.
I just got some VHS tapes that were from the 90's. If I try to record them on a VHS to DVD recorder (it's on the same unit), some tapes simply stop the recording. I'll get a message from the DVD recorder that says it's copy protected. I will find a way. I'm just copying VHS tapes that I cannot find on DVD, or streaming format. They're nothing most people would want to watch anyways. They're equestrian training tapes. If anyone knows a trick to copy them, let me know.
Is that the original picture tube in that TV? Looks like its front was put over a newer one. You still need these boxes to copy tapes to DVD recorders- the picture doesn't get messed up going through them, but they'll see the Macrovision signal and refuse to go into Record mode.
Don't forget be kind, rewind the VHS tape or pay $0.50 for each VHS tape not having been reminded. Those video rental stores would come up with ways to nickle and dime u one way or another.
