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PS2 + Upscan Converter = Easy DVD to VHS Copying
Lots of people submitted the news: An EETimes story from last week that tells how Japanese gamers are using a (Japanese model) Sony Playstation 2, an upscan converter like the Micomsoft model XRGB-2, and an easily-obtained adaptor cable to make VHS copies of DVD movies. As an unintentional byproduct of its other functions, an XRB2 or similar upscan converter installed between the RGB output of a PS2 and the RGB inputs on a VCR apparently disables the Macrovision encoding used to prevent DVD copying. This trick is almost certainly illegal, and the "problem" will surely be fixed before Sony starts exporting PS2s in quantity, so don't get your hopes up, okay?
Anonymous Coward writes "US supreme court has just ruled that everyone must walk with their eyes closed so they can't watch DVDs and copy the information within into their short- and long-term memories."
If you're already happy watching grainy, low-res video with washed out colors, do you really care that the brightness goes up and down the whole time?
Linux boxes were doing this years before Playstation 2 became the media darling. All you needed was an LML33 and a DVD drive, plus you could do color correction.
The idea is such that you rent a DVD and make a video tape copy. You see the movie and get a copy for your low cost library.
Yes, VHS isn't that great, but given the average setup in the average home, it's not that bad, and if there are children, they can watch a movie hundreds of times, wear out the tape, make a new one. But some DVD players are sensitive to scratches, so if the kids scratch the disc, that screws your copy. Making copies is also handy if you have multiple TVs but only 1 DVD player, assuming the other TVs have VCRs too, so that you can at least watch the movie. In the analog equivalent, say I have a car with a tape player, and do not want to buy a CD player to replace it, so I make a copy of a CD and play the tape in the car. Actually, I mostly use minidisc for audio, but you get the point.
No matter how much you encrypt/decrypt this data, there are at least 2 points along the way where the raw RGB is available:
After DeCSS and before encryption by the video card
Isn't the whole point to leave the RGB encrypted by at least one layer through the entire path?
After decryption in the tv/monitor and before it hits the analog tube control.
I don't think Hollywood's particularly worried about anyone copying their precious intellectual property by digitising the voltage on their CRT.
Under the DMCA, circumventing copy protection is illegal, unless you're doing legitimate security research (a defense that, as the DeCSS case shows, one pretty much has to be a respectable research facility to use).
Apparently the copy protection on VHS tapes can be circumvented with "signal amplifiers". Are these now illegal, or do they have a legitimate purpose? Does this trick apply to the DVD implementation of Macrovision?
Apparently, to suppress such devices, Macrovision built one and patented it, purely to sue anyone who makes them for infringement.
Does the patent apply to all "picture stabilisers", or are they "prior art"; or does the new Macrovision (on DVDs, as opposed to the one on commercial tapes) thwart this hack?
This has (IMHO) come about as a consequence of digital recording.
When cds were released, we could all record cd -> analogue tape and that was ok as the recording was lossy and therefore not a major problem. This was great as we could play music we'd bought in our cars and walkmans (walkmen?)
Then along came DAT, DCC and MiniDisc and suddenly it was possible to make digital recordings or music we'd bought (well licensed etc) so there was a panic and they came up with SCMS (serial copy management system or something like that) which limited the number of digital copies you could make. You could (can) still make analogue copie however.
Spurred on by this exciting deveopment, macrovision was added to video tapes to stop people renting anc copying tapes (this was from the time when it took many years for a film to be released on video except in rental stores) and then subsequently added to all pre-recorded movies.
Que the 21st Century and we have the precedent where copy protection has been included in some form or another on pre-recorded media for years such that the MPAA (and others) can pretty much do as they will.
Hohum
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
I want to make a VHS copy of "Seven Samurai", so I can take it round to my friends house and watch it with them.
Firstly, as you point out, the "bypassing of access control mechanisms" clause does not come into effect until October of this year.
Secondly, as I keep saying, CSS (and macrovision) do not control access to a work, they controls use of the work. Therefore bypassing them is not illegal. Copyright law has clear distinctions between "access" and "use" - "access" is acquisition. See the American Libraries Association's comments.
Here's the link to the ALA comments, oops.
You still cannot redistribute them or even borrow them to your friend but you can make copies so that if the original media becomes faulty you can still use your backup.
<rant> I know that the media giants have been trying to make this illegal for as long as there have been VCRs. This time they might even succeed with the new additions to the copyright law and the new technology.
We the people must fight it at every turn.
As consumers we must demand that we get what we want. We don't want obscene copy protection. We want Fair Use.
ALL copyprotection schemes are flawed. If it can be viewed, it can be copied.
Fight The Power.
Power=Money
Money=Big Business
Big Business=Mega Corporations
Sony=Mega Corporation
You do the math.
</rant>
plugging all the 'security' holes and hacks in DVD's those suckers are gonna cost $125 a pop. The movie and music 'industry' should take a clue from the failures of the software industry, in the 80's, to implement hardware copy protection on consumer software: is was an escalating techno-war between producers and consumers that caused so many problems for ordinary users (can't make a backup, original floppys get damaged - well, we aren't buying from THEM anymore) that it is no longer common practice. They really outta get a clue that not everybody buys pirated warez - a vast majority of ordinary movie buyers are above buying zip-lock baggie-ware from some scum pirate operation. If they make a movie viewing experience pleasant they'll make $$$. If they get their undies all wadded up over someone "instantaneously distributing a high quality full length feature film to 6 billion people via the net" (which is BS) it's going to go the way of the laser disk - a very small market techno oddity, not the mass market they'd like to get in a head lock.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Annoying when you have to "fix" a new product before it will "work".
For some reason, I find the variations in brightness to be very annoying. When I first got a DVD player, it drove me crazy and I wondered if there was something wrong with the mastering or the MPEG decoder. Later on, I found out about macrovision and the "fix" for the problem, which was to buy a video switch so that the DVD video signal could go straight into the TV.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well, I don't know about you, but I like my porno movies the old fashioned way...grainy and low-res. These new-fangled damn DVD players have too much quality. Did you know that porno chicks are actually uglier than sin? Until DVD, who knew? I was content watching barely viewable porno and eating cheese puffs...and thanks to the PS2, DVD won't ruin my porn sessions any more!!!
-Jer
A DVD-ROM drive and Remote Selector let me do this very thing right now. I don't see as there's so much newsworthy about it...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
You can't put Macrovision on pure RGB signals. That's why I bought a deck with component outs -- and they've been around since the first generation of DVD players.
If you are a legitimate videogame developer, however, things are different - you may have a copy of the disk file of a game (not necessarily the one you're working on). This has been recognized in the courts. See this web page for more details. Root of this document is here.
(In response to all the posts in this thread...)
I'm not sure if this would have been legal a few years ago, but it is definitely illegal now, thanks to the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Remember, the principle of fair use says that it is not illegal to make "backups" of a copyrighted work. It does not say that you have a right to make backups. In this case, it is still legal to make backup copies of your DVDs; it is just illegal to circumvent copy-protection measures in the process.
Apparently the Librarian of Congress (?!) can declare exceptions to the above, but I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now if such an exception had been made. Until that happens, it's illegal to break Macrovision. (At least, after the provision takes effect in October -- why hasn't anyone brought that point up yet?)
Disclaimer: I don't like the DMCA.
MSK
An EETimes story tells how gamers are using the IBM PS/2, with its good ol' proprietary micro channel architecture, to make copies of DVD movies and old game cartridge ROMs. IBM will almost certainly "fix" the problem before it continues to ship more units in its effort to dominate the personal computer market.
-JD
It's not illegal until you sell the tapes. One could buy the DVD, rent a DVD player and copy the DVD to VHS, all perfectly legal.. it's the same as putting your CDs on tape for use in your walkman or car.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It'd be cheaper to tape it off pay-per-view. $3.75 and you have your own copy on tape. I just don't see much point in spending oodles of money in order to copy DVDs, when you can get it off pay per view (if it's a new movie) or buy the tape for $10.
Sony is making an upskirt converter?
Oh. Sorry, misread that.
I guess I was thinking about Sony's prior gaffe; a videocamera's infrared night-vision feature that when used in daylight rendered thin clothing as transparent.
(Infrared Upskirt Converter =anagram>Trick run: render of privates,
Or it transferred pink curve)
[
However, there are limited legitimate reasons for wanting to copy a DVD to VHS. Not many people have a TV that can't handle Macrovision, and very few people to back up their DVD's to tape. Some people do, but not many.
However there are several reasons for wanting to connect a DVD player to a TV through a VCR without using it to record, such as the TV not having enough inputs. Macrovision usually thwarts such efforts.
--
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Things are only impossible until they are not.
....the MPAA sues Sony to take the PS2 off the market while pressuring Japanese police to arrest the head of their engineering department?
-- WhiskeyJack
Yeah, it's neat that somebody hacked it, but it's like going around boasting that you reprogrammed the PROM in your car to only go 25 miles per hour. (Only useful if you valet park alot or have teenagers that want to borrow it)
kwsNI
OK, so by a slight bit of technical jiggery-pokery, you can copy your DVD to VHS.
Funny thing is, I've had the technical capability to copy audio CDs to cassette tape for years. No one has seen the need to 'fix' CD players to prevent people like me from doing this. The entertainment business has not been bankrupted by people doing this.
So why is this any different ? In building clever hardware to prevent writing VHS tapes, Sony will increase production costs of the PS2, increase complexity and decrease reliability - it will be one more component to go wrong. It isn't even a bit that is needed to make the PS2 work ! The entertainment industry will have their DVDs protected for now.
(*RANT)The only people missing from the equation is us, the consumer. We will pay for these 'design modifications', get more complex, less reliable products, and be expected to pay for the resulting repairs when they go wrong. Solving the problem by technological means is stupid, particularly when the problem is not technological in the first case. OK, there is a threat of piracy. Piracy is less of a problem when you are giving genuine value for money, and don't have a business process supporting a vast array of expensively upholstered intermediaries. This is the real problem faced by the entertainment industry. They need to downsize and restructure, like the rest of us have had to do, or die. Their lawyers will not help them ultimately, because ultimately they rely on the patronage of people like you and me, and someone will eventually 'get it' and take their business from them.(*/RANT)
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
I guess this is a consequence of the complexity within current computers/consoles/home AV equipment etc.
:)
:)
Here in the UK, a large number of DVD players are eitehr sold or are later modified to play Region 1 discs so we can buy movies from the States where they are much cheaper. A consequence of this mod is that macrovision is disabled (for better or worse etc) Most people aren't even aware of this aspect of the mod, or even care - we just want our movies
I would think that the harder Sony try to remove this 'feature' from the PSX 2, the more people will hack deeper into the hard/software and find alternate methods - after all the Sony DVD players are all easily modded to allow the same functions.
I would think an interesting debate would be on teh merits of copy protection and whether it's necessary at all. Specifically the macrovision and/or region coding that goes on - i.e. is macrovision ok to stop people copying dvd -> video and Region coding bad (mmmmkay) or vice versa or are we all against everything?
Personally I have no problems with macrovision as I don't plan to copy dvds but I HATE the Region coding with a vengence and that's why I had my DVD modded and will certainly have my PSX 2 modded when I buy it later this year (or whenever they are out in the UK)
Just some thoughts, I know some of the have been hashed out before but I fancied a quick typo
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
This isn't exactly new. You can go to Best Buy and purchase Macrovision scrubbers, and have been able to for some time. These have a number of completely legal uses, not the least of which being using a DVD player with a TV/VCR combo unit.
Or wanting to be able to use a DVD player and VCR with a TV with only one set of composite inputs. I got a composite AB-switch, but it still annoys me that I can't switch things with the remote.
I was confusing the Slashdot story with the one that just aged off of The Register. The convert RGB to NTSC part is still accurate and not that difficult.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Macrovision, OTOH, enforces copy restriction even when that is against the copyright holder's wishes. So you can see that mandatory Macrovision is simply a tool used by the consumer media industry to ensure that no independent source of DVDs becomes popular.
BTW, if you think openly redistributable works of art are not a phenomenon, I present Ani Difranco as an example. Her CDs and tapes are very widely sold, and come with this rather loose copyright notice: "Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing."
-jwb
I have a large collection of high-quality, digital audio recordings on CD. Is there a way that I can transfer these pristine recordings to a lossy, low-quality, non-random-access, fragile, progressively degrading magnetic medium? Something like audio cassettes would be ideal.
Oh, and if these stereo recordings can be converted to mono during the process, so much the better.
This is so *Shockingly* mundane a thing to hear that I'm really, truly saddened to see it wasting bandwidth.
You know those little boxes you can buy to let you duplicate VHS tapes that they sell in the back of Popular Mechanics? They really work, and they still really work for DVD players. All of them. Not just PSX2. And they're essentially the same thing as the upscan converter refered to here.
Lemme 'splain the concept behind Macrovision.
One of the qualities of the VHS format is that the horizontal sync signal is weakly recorded. This wasn't due to some corporate conspiracy, It's just Not a Very Good Format. VHS doesn't record the whole video signal, including not recording the whole sync signal. This is why even non-copy-protected VHS tapes look like crap when you copy them. Let me reiterate, this is NOT because of the fiendish plans of Mr. Valenti. It's simply because VHS is crappy technology.
"Macrovision" is essentially the act of intentionally providing a weak sync signal. That's right. All they do is make it weaker.
This works brilliantly, because Mr. Valenti has made it illegal to fix a VCR so that it has it's own amplifier on the sync signal. You take a poor sync signal, record it badly, and you have a really crappy copy.
TV's don't suffer from this because they are designed to recieve the whole video signal and not just some of it. Thus, you can get good video plugging DVD directly into your tv, and you can get good video plugging VHS directly into your tv, but when you plug DVD into VHS there's too much loss between the two to end up with a good signal.
SO, insert something that makes up for the poor sync signal, or prevent the sync signal from being degraded, and everything is hunky-dory.
Any questions?
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I don't see how or why this trick can be illegal. It might be that distributing the result of this trick to others may be illegal. But making a backup copy of the movie shouldn't be illegal. Or maybe someone wants to extract a small part of the movie to be used in a (critical) review about that movie. I think that should be fair use.
because they can't/don't have to.
Macrovision is a copy protection method that takes advantaged of the AGC (Automatic Gain Control) in a VCR. They make the VCR think that the Gain need be adjusted all the time and hence a bad recording.
Devices like scan converters recreate the video signal (without Macrovision) and are not sensitive to the AGC themselves.
In other words, this is not a problem with the PS2. This trick works with any Macrovision encoded video (like from any DVD player). It's known and people have been doing this for years.
Actually, a better way to get DVD's to a VHS is to use a PC based DVD decoder and disable the Macrovision on there. For at least a few hardware decoders I've seen software and/or hardware patches that allow disabling the Macrovision encoding. That way you don't have to go throught the scan-converter which will undoubtly degrade the video quality a little.
Breace.
In order to control content access and delivery, the MPAA is working on (recently patented) secure digital tv/monitor interfaces which send data in encrypted form from a computer (or game console) to the monitor, which means the following:
No matter how much you encrypt/decrypt this data, there are at least 2 points along the way where the raw RGB is available:
This only makes coyping inconvenient, but will certainly make ordinary use more complicated and expensive.
Used to be, the government was concerned with providing access to technology (like TV) to the widest possible audience using the most straightforward, most easily implemented solutions to encourage proliferation of new technologies.
Nowadays, it really seems like the government is a puppet of anyone waving enough money in front of capitol hill.
That's progress for you.
@home, working on my manifesto...
This (supposedly) only works with pre-1989 Betas. Around 1989, Hollywood finally confronted Sony and forced them to make Beta vulnerable to Macrovision, just like VHS. Of course, by then, it was a little late, as Beta was irreversibly going down.
I'm on a mailing list called the Beta Informer , and there has been quite a lot of discussion about Betamax's apparent invulnerability to Macrovision.
Here's a quote from issue #129, in a submission by Dan Petitpas:
[Some pre-1985 TVs would show a distorted picture when used to view a Macrovision-protected videotape.]
From another contributor:
From Mr. Petitpas:
Anyway, I've heard a lot of people talk about making perfect copies of DVDs and copy-protected VHS tapes on their Betamaxes. I tried that a few times with my SL-100 SuperBetamax (made in 1986), but I still got a mild lightening and darkening of the picture.
I still don't fully understand the relationship between Macrovision and Beta decks. If the AGC on Betas is wired to the inputs, wouldn't that cause the Beta deck to produce screwed-up recordings of copy-protected tapes? It would be clamping down the stronger video signal.
What I do know is that Macrovision (on videotapes) mainfests itself as a really bright white line just above the picture (in the out-of-band area) on your TV, and most VCR's AGCs take this into account when determining the picture's brightness (which is why videotape copies have that "flashing" effect). Also, if you're ever watching a commercial video and the screen appears bright or distorted at the top of the picture, that's Macrovision at work. The brightness at the top of the picture is especially noticeable at the beginning of the video, during the black screens between the trailers and the antipiracy notice.
The APEX 600D mentioned here at Slashdot has the "hidden" menu that lets you disable Macrovision.
Here is a list of region/macrovision cracks for home dvd players (many done with a keysequence on remote control)
DVD Utils Home DVD Cracks
If that is already slashdot'd, try one of the mirrors through:
DVD Utils
So basicly, the PS2 hack is not news. You can go out today and a consumer DVD player with a known Macrovision disable feature, and copy movies to video tape to your hearts content, and avoid all the Macrovision glitches.