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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.
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
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.
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 :)