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TV picture from DVD fades in and out??

The TV in out teen agers's playroom has only an RF input and the kids have a commodity grade VCR and an entry level DVD hooked up to it.

The RF output from the VCR feeds the input of the TV, and the DVD's video and audio outputs are connected to the corrosponding inputs on the VCR.

All's well when playing video tapes on the VCR, but when playing a DVD the TV image "fades" or changes contrast slowly with a cycle time of about 20 seconds. Not badly enough to make you miss anything on the screen, but it's noticably annoying.

I wrote it off as being some weird kind of incompatibility anomaly, and since I don't have to watch DVDs in that room I didn't bother trying to eliminate the problem.

Yesterday I was at a friend's home who had a similar setup, but with different brands of equipment and his TV image faded in an out the same as ours when he tried to show me a scene on a DVD.

That got me wondering if that fading effect is a "well known problem" and if it is, what's the easiest way to get things working "normally".

Thanks guys,

Jeff

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Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."
Reply to
Jeff Wisnia
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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.

Reply to
James Sweet

: 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.

formatting link
is one such device.

b.

Reply to
<barry 

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Reply to
JR North

Thanks much! I hadn't thought of that. I dug out the little battery powered digital video stabilizer I bought about ten years ago to let me copy VCR tapes, put it in the video line between the DVD output and the VCR input and, "Bob's your uncle!" (Worked great.)

Jeff

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Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."
Reply to
Jeff Wisnia

He can't, there's no RF out of a DVD player.

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rgds
LAurence

...RAM DISC is not an installation procedure
Reply to
Laurence Taylor

No wonder you had the problem. You cannot simply use a VCR as a modulator for a DVD player due to the macrovision.

Reply to
dkuhajda

As others have mentioned, this is an artifact of the Macrovision copy protection. Not all VCR's will do this when in 'pass-thru' mode. My JVC will work fine, until you hit RECORD.

There are some RF modulators out there that also have an A/B switch. You can feed the DVD through the modulator, with the VCR/antenna being switched. Alternately, just get a modulator and an RF switch. Both are real cheap. You just switch between the two inputs.

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Reply to
Andrew Rossmann

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."
Reply to
Jim Nugent

Tell that to my kids...same stuff...better to make up a story than to tell the truth/do the research...before anyone jumps in that it was our fault...as far as I know, it wasn't. :-(

The big problem is that it will persist as a trend...pattern...habit...IQ's of 140+ being wasted on cable/satellite/video games...it's going to hit us hard in our later years, when the people who are looking after us are battling Zarod in the Delthorn Neverrealm, and we are losing our benefits.

The good thing is...it'll really hit them harder!

Tom

Tom

Reply to
Tom MacIntyre

You'd be surprised. The cheap ones very often can be easily hacked via the remote controls, though more commonly to make them multi region. It's the more expensive brand-name ones which have a habit of needing to be 'chipped'.

Dave

Reply to
Dave D

The cheaper they are, the more likely they are sold around the world in various versions, and the more likely that the firmware can be easily altered. This lets the seller put in fixes and modify the initial video branding/logos so they can be sold in different channels.

It also lets others remove/change macrovision or region coding. The usual method is to put a binary image of new firmware on a CD. When that CD is put into the DVD player, the player recognizes the special filename as a new firmware image and loads the new image. There are websites that offer firmware images without region coding and macrovision disabled. They have full instructions/images for many machines.

I have a 1979 TV with RF only input that I've repaired so many times it's a friend. I needed to add a DVD player and I used the VCR as my RF modulator. All you need is the image for your machine and a CD burner. If you want to get fancy, these websites describe how to modify the logo that comes up to personalize your player.

Reply to
T o d d P a t t i s t

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