Macrovision Killer/eliminator

Hello everyone, and a happy new year. I bought a DVD recorder for Christmas a Philips 610 with the intention of putting all my home Videos onto DVD, for safer keeping. I had tried with a couple of capture cards in my PC over the years, but always ended up with files too big and not very good quality, so I abandoned that idea. Anyway back to the DVD recorder. My boy asked me about a week ago if he could watch Star Wars, which we have on VHS, so I thought to myself oooh, I might as well make a backup of it with the DVD recorder, while he is watching it, completely forgetting that there may be some copy protection on the video. The reason I tried to make the backup is, that we have lots of video films and cartoons that we have bought over the years, and one or two of them are starting to deteriorate. After three or four tries It then dawned on me that their must be some protection on the video because it wouldn't record it. After making some enquiries I discovered Macrovision was the culprit. After a bit more digging round I heard that there was such a thing as a macrovision killer/eliminator. I found several retailers on the internet but all except one were in the United States, and the one in the UK where I live claimed to have a set of scart leads that would do the job, but they just looked like any other set of scart leads to me, so I didn't bother. I then found a couple of circuit diagrams but they must be fairly old because one of the main components on each circuit is discontinued. Now several years ago I took up electronics as a hobby, I went to college and did quite well, buying my own oscilloscope, frequency counter, logic probe, etc. I then bought a PC and that was the end of my electronics hobby. I still have all my gear, and think I could build one if I can get hold of a good circuit diagram. I would appreciate any help from anyone. Thank you very much, Stan.

De-Macrovision cables are available from :

Here in the US, Macrovision Killers are usually advertised as 'video enhancers' with cute pictures on the advertisements showing the characteristic darkening/lightening of the image that is the result of Macrovision processing; this 'politically correct' approach seems to let them remain on the shelves when perhaps they otherwise wouldn't.

They are pretty ubiquitous; I was in a CompUSA today and they had them. It's true that there's not a whole lot in the box -- usually a sync detector/separator IC and some logic for truly 'blanking' the blanking interval rather than allowing Macrovision to goof around with it, although I have seen some fancier ones (such as the one at CompUSA) that have, e.g., PAL/NTSC selectability, S-Video connections, etc.

I'm sure you can find some schematics of Macrovision killers on the 'net, but the boxes are usually

Throw a scope on the video output and you can observe what's in Macrovision... mostly just "whiter-than-white" bursts to confuse the AGC in the recorder. Sometimes there's also some extra sync around the vertical pulse. All really easy to fix once you think about it... think REPLACE ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Hi Stan,

Macrovision works (IIRC) by messing with the sync signal. It is therefore *HIGHLY LIKELY* that a successful MV killer *will* be a cable of some description, as it will have to modify the sync signal.

Cheers Terry

Hi,

I think Macrovision managed to get a court ruling to prevent such devices being sold in Europe, as removing the copy protection infringed their Patents in some way. Such boxes 'Video Enhancers' were quite widely made - at work we bought one made by Hamma which has S-Video and Composite video in/out. Although they might not be easily obtainable new Ebay might be worth checking. There were plenty of magazine articles showing how to build one, usually involving a sync separator IC and some logic driving an analogue switch so that the appropriate parts of the video signal were set to black level. I did build one but seem to remember black level clamping wasn't all that good. I am surprised that a key component in the design you found is obsolete, there is probably a substitute out there, perhaps post the name of the chip you cannot get.

The Macrovision signal on a DVD disc is actually generated in the DVD player rather than being recorded on the disc, a 'flag' on the disc tells the player to turn on the Macrovision encoding. Another approach might be to disable the Macrovision inside the DVD player, back in the days when DVD players needed some form of hardware change to make them play Region 1 discs, the same modification would often disable the Macrovision allegedly to stop problems with projection TV's which didn't like the Macrovision signal. Nowadays in the UK Region modified DVD players are quite common but I suspect they just play all discs rather than have the macrovision disabled. Again Ebay might turn up an older DVD player with all the modifications already done.

Philip

Hi,