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Harry Potter, Macrovision and Economics
markthebrewer writes "Apparantly Warner Home Video have released Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone without any of the usual Macrovision copy-protection systems.
Looks like its just a trial, but someone's done the maths and decided it may be cheaper not to copy-protect videos after all.
Find the full article in the
New Scientist." There is certainly something desperate about macrovisions response to this development. Does anyone see macrovision as a real barrier to copying anymore? What a bunch of snake oil salesmen these people are. In related news, I'm marketing my own personal copy protection device.
I have defeated Macrovision on both VHS and DVD, only for legal purposes, by simply using what amounts to a video amplifier, which I picked up at Worst Buy some years back for about $50.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
On some DVD players, you can disable Macrovision by means of uploading a new ROM into the player by burning it onto an ISO 9660 CD-R, or by hitting a secret key combination on the remote. It's mostly APEXes and Daewoos that let you do this; ironic that they are the cheapest yet most hackable DVD players. I have a cute little APEX I scored for $70 at Circuit City... that sucker plays DVDs, VCDs, SVCDs, CD-Rs, MP3s (!), and they kitchen sink. Most DVD players have a "Factory setting" menu that you can get to, but you need to know the secret code.
Of course you'd never get goodies like this from the big boys (aka Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic).
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Video == DVD I mean. I just get into that habit of calling any sort of movie at home a video.
Macrovision is mandatory in the DVD player. The player itself is responsible for creating the signal; you can't encode Macrovision into an MPEG stream. The creators of the disks have to decide whether to use Macrovision on their disk though, which is basically "set the Macrovision bit" or not. If they choose to set the macrovision bit then they're supposed to pay some money per copy to Macrovision.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Not only that, but Blockbuster chose Harry Potter as the one title, in all of their inventory, that they would price match any local competitor on. CompUSA has been selling limited quantities (really limited, as in sold out in the first hour limited) of Harry Potter for $9.95 brand new. So, all you gotta do is take the print ad for CompUSA showing the $9.95 price over to Blockbuster and then you can buy a new copy for $10 and not have to worry about ever renting it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What ever happened to the Metamoderator. The /. l337 h4kr faggots who modded this up should be slapped silly.
Anyway, Here's how Macrovision works, and here is a link for a Macrovision remover that will actually work (I built one!).
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
Actually, it's just the opposite. TV tuners have a slow gain adjust that's unable to adjust quickly enough to supposably distort the signal (it all averages out good). While VCR's have fast gain control, which follows Macrovision's messed up signal more accurately, messing up the video.
I don't read AC A human right
VCD Helper has had a list of DVD Player hacks available for quite a while. From everything to modifying your brightness to reconfiguring country codes through methods put in by the manufacturer for testing. It's really interesting to see the hidden features of your otherwise normal DVD player :)
These are terribly rough numbers as I'm not sure how many copies were really sold, only gross dollars sales figures from here.
.05c a copy.
The linked article noted that HP sales totaled about $200 million (US) the first week of video release. I took a wild guess at each copy selling for $16 (about what I bought mine for), arriving then at a figure of $625k that they would have had to pay Macrovision at
And that's just the first week! I had never thought before about how much companies had to pay to have Macrovision - given how much it costs (or that it costs ANYTHING) I can't believe video companies use this technology at all! And I thought the lottery was the biggest stupidity tax going.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
did you know that running a DVD at 1600x1200 won't show any quality increase, as the video is only encoded at 720x480 in NTSC (720x576 in PAL)?
Sorry, but I'm picking some nits now.
First of all, 720x480 is not a square-pixels resolution; my understanding is that the actual image, visible pixels only, in square pixels is 640x480.
However, "widescreen" movies in anamorphic format cram extra stuff into a line. Maybe those actually put 720 horizonal pixels on a line?
Second of all, 1600x1200 cannot create new detail from nothing, but it might look nice if the upsampling is done cleverly. There are some good filters that can improve a picture compared to simple pixel-stretching. Video stretched like this should look better than video shown at TV resolution on a screen of the same size; the TV image will be only 640x480 and the gaps between pixels will be more noticeable. The bigger the TV screen and the closer you sit, the more you notice the actual pixels of the image.
Third, the TV image will be 60 Hz interlaced; the computer monitor may well be 85 Hz or more, noninterlaced. There isn't any actual extra image data (it will still update only about 30 times per second) but the computer monitor might well be easier on the eyes (some people are more sensitive to interlacing flicker than other people are).
Fourth, some movies (and some video games) contain images that stress the abilities of NTSC to display them. "Chroma crawl" or flickering can result. A nice upsampling algorithm, and display on a nice computer monitor, and the image should look much nicer than on a real TV. (Note that an S-Video cable or even better still real component cables can help, here.)
Enough nits. And I agree with your suggestion: setting your display to something close to 720x480 may be the best bet. Especially if you have a monitor that can drive an 800x600 image at 120 Hz!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
If something is protected with Macrovision, it'll generally have the Macrovision logo on the back together with the Dolby Digital and Region stuff. Those who think it's compulsory might want to flick through their DVD collection and look.
Now this article is newsworthy if it's suggesting that Harry Potter is Region Free and CSS Free too. But there's nothing to hint at that in the write up. Harry Potter is macrovision free because it doesn't actually help, it's expensive (DVD content makers have to pay a per-disc * per-crippled-frame royalty for using the system), and it's a load of crap.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
It's worse than that. That's a 5 a disk that Warner Home Video has to pay -- and they don't get anywhere near the retail price for a sale.
Between distributors and retail stores, WHV receive about two thirds of the sale price, most of which has to pay for royalties (to Warner Bros [Time Warner companies are separate -- they have to pay each other for everything], to the actors, and so on), the production involved in encoding and mastering the DVD, and many other people.
A nickel a disc is even bigger than it seems.
>>some games require their copy protected disks to be left in the drive
A visit to www.gamecopyworld.com should fix that.