Quote:
Originally Posted by ihmeyers
I bought this DVD player because legitimate DVDs I bought on Amazon wouldn't play without the hash on my Admiral. I'd say at least 50% of them (including my beloved Honeymooners and Kolchak) were affected.
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Oooops! My apologies.
I just read a post from John (jeyurkon) in Michigan that should clear up this whole issue once and for all. He said that there is absolutely nothing illegal about disabling Macrovision protection at the viewer level (i.e. by changing an option in an on-screen menu, as is possible with many if not most DVD players sold in the US), if the intent is simply to eliminate interference when using DVD players with older televisions. Apparently, older TVs such as your Admiral roundie (I read here recently that the problem you mention affects and is most noticeable on round-tube color TVs) are very sensitive to foreign signals such as Macrovision, which was not even thought of (neither were DVD players or, for that matter, VCRs) when your television was new.
Your set's scanning circuitry may be interpreting the Macrovision signal as some sort of trigger for retrace lines; at this point I am only guessing, and could be way off base. Not being familiar with your particular video setup, I can't say with any degree of certainty exactly what may or may not be causing the problem, although if you can eliminate the hash by disabling Macrovision at your DVD player, it really doesn't matter.
BTW, it may be impossible, or at least very difficult, to defeat Macrovision protection in very cheap DVD players such as the Coby or Memorex machines currently being offered for sale at Best Buy, discount stores, etc. for $15 or less. For example, I'm not sure if I can easily defeat the protection on my own Memorex player, which I purchased for $40 almost a year ago from Best Buy, as there does not seem to be an option on any of the on-screen menus related to Macrovision--and I've studied the menus on mine, not to mention the instruction manual, very carefully. The thing has most options found in more expensive players, such as NTSC/PAL switching, a defeatable screen saver (which reminds me, when in operation, of the old Atari PONG video game system), audio setup options and so on, but nothing that I can see regarding copy-guard systems. If there is in fact a switchable option for Macrovision it is probably hidden somewhere in one of those menus, and I mean hidden very, very well, probably so that the function cannot be altered inadvertently.
On your player it may be "on" by default; judging from what you're saying about the player causing hash on your old TV, this seems very likely. Go into the menu screens, find the option marked "Macrovision on/off" (or similar wording), and toggle the option to off; this should eliminate the hash forever and for good. In your case, it seems like it did.
BTW: Who manufactured your DVD player? it seems to me that your machine must be much, much more sophisticated than those cheapies I referred to above, if it has an OSD menu option to enable or disable copy protection.