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James Sweet wrote:


: That's from the Macrovision copy protection. You can get a little box
: that will remove it from the signal, or you can see if your DVD player
: is hackable to remove it. On my Apex it was a matter of getting into a
: hidden menu and turning the useless stuff off.

Agreed. You need to do a google search for "image stabilizer" and put
one of them in the video line between the DVD player and the VCR.
http://www.checkhere22.com/stabilizer.html is one such device.

Thank you very much for this link. I have 2 small TV/VCR combos whose AV
inputs go directly to the internal VCR which sends the signal to the TV via
passthrough mode which apparently includes that pesky AGC circuitry that
makes it vulnerable to Macrovision. No way around it (other than tearing
apart a densely packed clump of electronics in the hope of locating the
input to the TV circuitry with no schematic. :-(

I am (was) totally unfamiliar with Macrovision video copy protection because
I've never copied a commercial tape. I though this cyclical problem was some
kind of "beat frequency" interaction between oscillators in the VCR and DVD
player. The Radio Shack salesdroid was useless, claiming it had to do with
overheating. Why can't they just learn the 3 words "I don't know." There's
really no shame in admitting that.

My DVD player is as cheap as they come (or came --- at the time --- $40) and
most likely does not include firmware to disable Macrovision, even
undocumented. Their (Cyberhome) knowledge base has an entry for this very
problem, and sends you to the a Macrovision FAQ which essentially says,
don't even try to defeat it, you scofflaw! All I want to do is watch DVDs,
dammit.

I ordered one of these boxes from ClearPix link above.

BTW in my case the artifact was not too bad, and did not make a DVD
unwatchable (remember, I'm not recording). When I saw the brightening and
dimming, at first I thought it was random, and just meant the TV was getting
a little senile. Then my son explain that this happen every time the DVD
signal was sent through a VCR, internal or external. Aaaugh! Now it drives
me crazy.

I hope the stabilizer box works.
--
Jim
"Remember, an amateur built the Ark; professionals built the Titanic."