Slashdot Mirror
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 thought Macrovision was mandatory? Does Time Warner get an out because it's a member of the consortium? That certainly doesn't sound fair.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
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.
The reason is simple. The first wave of Harry Potter video buyers are going to be parents driven crazy by their children to get the thing. Middle America usually just goes to Wal-Mart or some store and picks it up. For $20 they get the best babysitter in the world. It's cheaper to make non-cp videos so that makes profit margins go even higher up for the video.
No parents is going to let their kid keep screaming while they go call people they know and see if they can't make a copy for it. They'll go to the store and get it and quiet the kid.
Adding Macrovision to video doesn't prevent the pirates from duplicating videos, so the biggest effect of Macrovision is to reduce the quality of the video. I applaud Time Warner for having some sense. (Now if they'd only let people log onto AOL without using their stupid software...)
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 a little scared by this? From the article:
Says CEO Bill Krepick: "Effective immediately, Macrovision's licensing policy (requires that) 100% of the title must be copy protected in a geographic territory or, if less than 100% of the title is copy-protected, then a Macrovision copy protection logo must be included in the exterior packaging of those units that are copy protected."
I say this is excellent news. Now I can make sure I only buy DVDs *without* Macrovision protection. Not because I want to pirate them (I own almost 300 DVDs now), but because Macrovision deteriorates the video signal. Don't "protect" your product by lowering the quality.
Frog
We are now getting down to the nuts and bolts i.e. cost-benefit analysis of copy protection. There will always be an element that will not pay for a product and the large studios know that. However, where 10 years ago people would hook up two VCRs and record the movie they rented, your now casual copier goes out to Kaaza before a movie is even released in theaters and downloads a copy. With the ease of use, proliferation of broadband, and movement of copying forces to another medium no wonder Warner decided to put up a test balloon and ship a product without Macrovision. Besides that five cents maybe spent better elsewhere especially if that five cents doesn't buy you anymore protection against copying then you already have. Be afraid Macrovision...its not the fact that you don't do your job because you do for the most part; its the fact that you have become obsolete in a day of P2P and broadband.
HT
I think the MPAA is (slightly) smarter than the RIAA as the retail/cost ratio of DVDs is not as insane as CDs. Many DVDs can be found for under $10. For most folks, it's just easier to buy a DVD than to deal with copying it.
-- Buzz
and money to get Macrovision not only supported, but legaly required (DMCA), they finaly figure out that it is simply less expensive to not use it after all.
You know I *hate* Harry Potter. Not sure why, but nevertheless I plan to purchase a copy of this just to support the idea.
Having little kids around makes copies necessary. VHS tapes are cheap and durable as far as kids are concerned. Make a copy and let them use the old VCR as often as they want. (Not that I always do this, but sometimes I want to.)
Making a personal copy is ok and should remain so. Maybe someone there gets it. Maybe not, it is likely about the money.
Still, can't help but wonder where this is leading.
Blogging because I can...
I really don't believe that Macrovision is necessary, and this Harry Potter example is a perfect one. If your a fan of the movie, you want to own the original. That pretty much sums up the whole Video and Music pirating industry. I guarantee there are thousands of Slashdotters out there that own the bootlegged DVD screener rip of Lord of the Rings, and I bet that almost everyone of you will buy at least one if not both of the DVDs when they become available later this year - just to have it. You like to display it in its packaging on a nice shelf next to your home theatre system, you enjoy the special features that one time you look at them (except for the Kevin Smith movies - the extra stuff on those are golden). Its just a strange little need to have the original - you feel like your contributing to something you enjoy. I'll download any movie I'm a fan of, but rest assured that as soon as its available on DVD, I'll pick it up.
Sound waves should be free!
the secret menu on your 600a Apex player and turn it off. I jumped to circut city when I saw the remote control trick posted on slashdot a while back...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
To think that anyone would even desire to copy this movie.
Hey kids, look! FUD!
If this "test" is successful, how long before the RIAA sues Warner for not following lock-step with the rest of the entertainment-industry against pirates?
It's also kinda cool that the DVD was also not protected, not just the video.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
i definately question the internet being the largest mode for piracy. WRONG. those cd factories in the US that are raided every few weeks that contain 1Million pirated cds or so. thats a LOT of piracy in one bust. That is just the US.
Try going to Asia, legal software is a fraction of the total sales, same with music, books, and Movies
No direct digital copying there.
Complete with puzzled script kiddes who couldn't figure out how to hack it. no bits and bytes.
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I've sent back about a thousand dollars worth of software because of this.
They're just trying to increase profits, that's all.
Which means *somebody* within the organization realizes that copy-protection 1) doesn't prevent piracy, 2) pisses people off, and 3) isn't saving them any money. Let's hope this "radical" idea spreads!
You know the only thing Macrovision does is prevent you from hooking up your DVD player through your VCR - which is sometimes desirable if you have an old TV.
Damn, I forgot about that. The (almost ex-)wife took back her TV the other day, and I am working with a loaner with only an RF input.
I've been using it for about three days, without remembering this problem.
Thank god I spent the extra scratch for a region and Macrovision-free DVD player!
-Peter
Macrovision fucks the signal up so that playback devices which have any signal compensation on their inputs will go bananas. Most televisions don't, but one of the reasons Macrovision stripping devices have a legit market is that quite a few projectors do.
Likewise, older VCRs without clever circuts to improve signal quality can ignore Macrovision.
(I say this in terms of DVD not VHS)
When I want to see a movie, I want to see the whole effect: the sound, the quality, everything. I have never watched a pirated DVD movie before, so I will be the first to admit that I don't know how good of a quality the rip may be. Perhaps very good, I just don't know.
In terms of actually _watching_ the movie it doesn't matter. Anyone can hook up on the web and grab pretty much whatever movie they want to watch. From what I've seen, movies found online are substandard quality. Yes, some are top-notch; however, then you must watch them on you computer system (which for some people a 21 inch monitor suffices).
Personally, I would prefer to watch movies with my wife in my living room on my TV with surround sound and DVD component quality. Perhaps this is old fashioned; yet I believe the atmosphere of a movie is just as important as the movie itself. I know quite a few people who had rips of AToC who refused to watch them until they had seen it in the theatres for the _full_ effect. Those same people will buy the DVD when it comes out regardless of their opinions of the movies itself (after all its Star Wars, though this has been debated already a million times already). This isn't always the case, obviously. However, I think the majority of people (ie computer-illterate) would much rather prefer to shell out a few bucks for the actual DVD than watch some ripped version on a computer screen (or burned to a DVD, which again I have not yet seen and maybe it IS as good as the original). I myself have taken to buying pre-viewed DVDs from blockbuster, they usually cost around $15.00 and in most cases are in perfect condition.
In terms of Harry Potter, Blockbuster actually has a deal where if you rent the movie, you can can come in later and buy a previewed DVD for only $10.00. Not to sound like an ad for BB, but 10.00 for a DVD is not a bad deal (although you have to add in the 4.00 you spent to rent it in the first place).
...the retail/cost ratio of DVDs is not as insane as CDs.
Not to mention that it costs a lot more to make a movie (100's of millions of dollars) than to make a CD.
Did anyone besides me get a kick out of the screen shots which accompany these instructions ? The "loophole" menu, which lets you change the region and disable Macrovision, displays a message on the bottom of the screen. It says "You should not be here".
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
5 cents per disk? At $20 a copy you need 1 lost sale for every 400.
And pirate copies aren't always lost sales. They may have copied the disk, but wouldn't have bought it anyway.
I knew a Playstation freak (I expect DVDs will follow a similar gameplan). He had a hundred games copied from rentals. Only played half dozen, or so. Oddly, perhaps, he actually went out and bought all his favorites.
Over all, I'd bet this guy ended up buying more disks. And he was happier for the experience.
First, he rarely felt cheated by the industry. If he was forced to buy 10 disks, and was unlucky, he may have decided all games sucked and walked away from the whole thing. Indeed, he ranted that a number of his copies weren't even worth the rental fee.
Second, his purchases reflect his true market feedback. He likes things he buys and if someone were to make more of that, he'd probably buy them too. Unlike hype driven purchases, of blind media, where any 10 "bets" on 10 games does nothing in the way of market feedback.
He bought a game that detected his mod chip once. Came to find out the game sucked. He was pissed off so badly about that $30 he talked about it for months. Swore to never blindly buy another game again. Avoided that vendor forever more. If they ever do have a good game, he'll probably never know it, and never buy it.
So, I'd bet 1 lost sale in 400 is an gross over assesment of real world losses.
I work in the set-top-box industry, and on several occasions I've worked with folks from Macrovision, Inc. I always found them to be quite intelligent and aware of the limitations and problems concerning their technology. Granted, these were engineers and not marketoids, but they seemed to be a genuinely cool group of people. I certainly didn't get any of the Copying=Communism bullshit we hear from so many in the Hollywood sphere of influence.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't judge a company on their press releases alone. Obviously Macrovision has an interest in seeing their copy protection scheme applied to DVDs, but that's what their company does.
And as far as the question of whether anyone sees Macrovision as an obstacle to copying, the answer is definitely YES. I would liken it to the security on your house - you lock the door, right? Well, will that keep out a determined burglar? No, but it will keep the honest people honest.
Please, feel free to flame away. This is just my opinion, based on the people I've dealt with at Macrovision.
Macrovision "copy-protection" is just as effective as the subject above: words, which can be used to sue you. It would actually be less profitful for them to actually make copying impossible, just get the de-facto standard on compensation for violation, and you get much more bang per pirate.
People are putting way too much faith in Warners here. I would not be surprised to find out that this was just a manufacturing glitch, not intentional, and that Macrovision was indeed paid their per-copy fee as usual.
One of my old VCRs used to have problems with anything with macrovision on it.unfortunately I had to get rid of it a few years back as it finally died (was over 20 years old too at the time). All I have to say about macrovision is that it sucks at doing it job. Another of my VCRs (one of the ones that replaced the old zenith VCR when it suddenly quit working) showed how worthless macrovision is, if you tried to record teh signal it would put out from a macrovision tape you would not be able to tell that it ever had it on there the first time (it never did get used for this purpose, and I don't remember how I found out it did this). It died quickly as did several GE VCRs, though my old Beta machine still plays perfectly, how is that for survivability (it is as old or older than my zenith was), wish they could make them like that beast.
In Russian some people call Macrovision "Mracovision", what can be approximately translated as "see the darkness". I find it a very funny and appropriate name for that bullshit.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The first book in the series was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , published in the UK in 1997. When the book was released in the US, the title was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone .
There were other changes as well.
The movie release had the same title change.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
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!
I noticed that Macrovision will require that for videos in which less than 100% of the production run uses Macrovision technology, those that do will have to be labeled with the Macrovision logo.
I wonder if this is something Macrovision has been waiting for an excuse to do. I notice they have actually been advertising themselves on videos, and they phrase their description so that it sounds like some sort of "protection" technology, so an uninformed consumer might think that it's a good thing that somehow prevents their video from wearing out rather than a nasty thing that restricts their fair use ability.
I'm basically wondering if Macrovision is trying to confuse, obscure, and obfuscate what they really are in a weird attempt to try to get consumers to actually look for or ask for their logo on stuff. If that's the case, I wonder why they're so desperate since they seem to have basically 100% market share already.
I particularly enjoy the insanity of this when the soundtrack of a movie costs more than the movie.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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 :)
If the MPAA is worried about me downloading a movie w/o paying for it, the best defense they have is to have a good rapport with me. If I respect you, I'm not going to let harm come to you. Unfortunately, they have treated us all like they need to throw us all in jail. At least that is what I envisioned when I heard about the SSSCA.
Let's face it, the tools are out there. They'll always be out there. Whether we use them in a damaging way or not is dependent on two things: 1.) Incentive not to, i.e. extras on the DVD and so on... 2.) Whether or not we care.
Frankly, when I first heard about the SSSCA and it's over-reaching implications, I was out for blood! I still am, really. If I do something the MPAA wouldn't like, I feel good about it. Film88.com? I probably would have been all over that had it not gone down, half because I knew the MPAA would have a shitfit. This sentiment is far more damaging than DeCSS or any other circumvention tool around.
What the MPAA needs to do, instead of trying to invent new technology to thwart copying they don't want, is to make us friendly towards them. Show that they're out to have fun instead of out to squeeze money out of our wallets. When that happens, I'm happy to give them my money for stuff like DVD's.
Make it socially unacceptable to download copies of movies w/o paying for them and you'll get far more done than using encryption that somebody's going to break.
"Derp de derp."
At least the one I bought for the kids had Macrovision enabled. Well, I pressed the magic buttons to conjure Macrovision away and copied the movie on VHS. Mind you, that was completely legal, since the video was for personal use (kids went to see their DVD-less grandparents for a couple of weeks and the only way to prevent the kids from driving poor gramps and granny nuts was to supplement them with the movie). Anyway, I find the whole Macrovision scheme laughable and completely disingenious, other than from the point of Macrovision the Co. who has successfully sold hi-tech snake oil for some time now.
Existence usually comes as a surprise (Idem)
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
what's the point of VHS if you've got DVD quality
For one thing, some TVs don't properly blank the VBlank portion of the signal. For another, mothers want to make durable copies of Dreamworks animated movies so that the originals don't get scratched up.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The great majority of Miramax titles are published without Macrovision protection. I don't see Slashdot clamoring about that fact.
Sigged!
sorcerer Pronunciation Key (sôrsr-r)
n.
One who practices sorcery; a wizard.
philosopher Pronunciation Key (f-ls-fr)
n.
A student of or specialist in philosophy.
A person who lives and thinks according to a particular philosophy.
A person who is calm and rational under any circumstances.
not quite the same.
When I was studing philosophy, I never heard anybody refer to a philosophy studen as a sorcerer, or one who practices sorcery
I drop from becoming a philosopher when I learned the number 1 question asked by philosophers:
"You wan't fries with that?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
released in the US, the title was changed
"What's a Philosopher's Stone?"
"I dunno, sounds like something to do with thinking."
"Thinking? YUCK!"
I don't know weather to be more offened at the idiots who decided to change the title, or the fact that they were probably right. Sigh.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
From the article:
...
Analysts suspect that Warner left the release unprotected, to investigate whether this would have a significant impact on sales.
Let's increase the sales figures for the non-protected DVD by buying it. Then we can convince the company that Macrovision actually hurts sales
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
sounds like you actualy have a legit reason to get one...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I can't see how this got modded up as 'Insightful', as it's such a flagrant troll. Here are the key phrases that reveal the post's true character:
Emphasis added.
The assertion that the software producer loses revenue is unproved and unprovable. Indeed, direct counterexamples can be pointed out.
The assertion that casual copying leads to copying for profit is laughable; as credible as the argument that consuming marijuana leads to mainlining heroin.
The "bearded Linux hippie" comment, being ad hominem, speaks to its own merit.
If you want to make the case in favor of copy protection, do so. Discoursing on baseless, unprovable, and disprovable theories lends no credibility to your position.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The stone not only turned things into gold, but it enabled the bearer to live forever. These two things are of vital interest to philosophers. If you could live forever, and had infinite wealth, you could spend a long time thinking about the meaning of life and the universe.
My other first post is car post.
the reason your beta machine still works is because it has not seen as much wear and tear as your vhs machines. if every movie you rented, every tape you borrowed, every show you recorded was on beta, the machine would probably be dead by now too.
You're talking about piracy over the net, in which case someone is making a DVD rip. The DVD itself does NOT have Macrovision encoded on it. It's the DVD players that add the Macrovision signal overlay. (This is why so many players have an option to turn it off; it's a no-brainer, requiring very little code.) A computer DVD player has no way of inserting a Macrovision signal to the mix, so the whole idea of using Macrovision to protect against online piracy is useless.
I put the Harry Potter Widescreen version in my DVD ROM drive, and it asked me what region I wanted to set my DVD ROM to, and that I had only 5 more times I could change it. Maybe I've just been playing all-region discs since my reformat a few weeks back, but I remember the 5 number from when I set it up over a year ago, as well.
off topic: Also, it has this buggy "InterActual" software fluff it tries to install on my system... I let it install, but it never sees a DVD in my DVD drive if there's a CD in my CD drive, and there's no easy way for me to hardcode what drive it should be looking at.
back on topic: My guess is they know that people have figured out how to suck the VOBs and convert them if they really want to be mean evil people, and have decided not to waste the money right now. I'm sure this doesn't mean they have given up on protection altogether; they'll just make the next DVD-replacement format a bit wackier, I'm sure. Frankly, I'm all for them releasing their best formatted stuff with protection, as long as it doesn't interfere with the playback quality. While there may be some grey area in the concept of viewing a screener version of a movie to decide if you want to pay to see it, there is NO grey area when it comes to directly trading ripped DVDs (or CDs, for that matter).
Get off my launchpad!
I always thought it was designed to simulate tape stretch or a dirty playback head.
I use an old Ferguson 3V24 portable video recorder. It was intended for use with a large video camera, from the days before cute wee Sony Handycams. The whole thing comes as two boxes, each about the size of a small PC case - one is the tuner, one is the VCR itself. The goodie is that in order to deal with a potentially marginal signal from the camera (think long video leads here) it has signal correction stuff on the video inputs. Which splats Macrovision. W00t.
Well if the do this AND drop the price of the things they'll cut back priracy. Why would I pay a few pounds down the market for a dodgy pirate copy when I can have the same thing from the original source with guaranteed quality for the same price??
Same applies to CD's. I'd buy more IF they were alot cheaper. The cost to maufacture is the same, but they'd make more profit by selling more....
Just a thought..
I would not be surprised if the studio did the math and discovered that they make more money off the licensing for Harry Potter Action Figures sold to the families who've only seen it on pirated video than they would from selling a legit video to those same families.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
That's sales lost - the number of copies to originals might actually be higher, but I bet most of the people watching a pirate VHS copy of a DVD would never have bought the original anyway.
Personally though I wonder how many extra DVDs they'd sell if they sold them for a fair price. A DVD costs cents to manufacture, costs less to transport than a VHS, takes up less shelf space, but sells for 150-200% of a VHS! I bet the profit margins for DVDs are double even if you add the cost of mastering and filling the disk with extras such as those crappy featurettes that they make anyway to send out in press kits and so on.
You spend millions to come up with a new technology to thwart people who can bust it in about two days for free. Meanwhile, you find your largely untested scheme causes Macs to freak and die. Then you end up in court in a class action suit.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Missed some, just about all Phillips DVD players can be hacked by using a universal remote.
Most DVD player brands have hacks available for their more common players, and even some of the less common, higher end players.
You can get playback from the off-brand DVD players, but my experience is that it's better to get a bigger name-brand player than to cheap out. I'd rather go for quality, so I went for a Panasonic RP-56 and chipped it. Its hack consists of a simple chip and a firmware upgrade.
I believe this was in the software context, back in the days of ProLock floppies and the like.
/. post in favor of the clipper!
They compared the software delivery market to early transatlantic shipping. In those days (not sure exactly when, but I suspect we're talking 1600s-1800s) there were two competing shipping models - the galleon and the clipper. The galleon said you send your goods to/from the new world in a heavily armed and escorted ship so it can defend itself from pirates. The clipper model said you send you goods to/from the new world in a ship so fast it could a: outrun most pirates, since they were heavily armed, and b: didn't spend as much time at sea, where they might get attacked.
In the end, of course the steamship won. But in the sailing technology race the clipper won, because it was simply more efficient at getting cargo from point A to point B. All of the armament of a galleon was a distraction from the primary task - shipping.
Unless of course the people running the galleons have an in with the legislature, and craft laws effectively outlawing clippers.
How's that, a
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Macrovision does increase the chances that you can't copy your DVD to a videotape so it can be played on the videotape player in the car. It's good to know that I can get a DVD of Harry Potter which the kids can enjoy on a long trip.
I just picked up Harry Potter (for the GF) and Black Hawk Down (mine) for $16 each at Best Buy. I am more than willing to pay this amount for a new release. Very few DVDs at Best Buy are over $20 and some of the titles that are shouldn't be. I doubt that that is BB's fault but the studio's.
BB also has a very large $9.99 and under section.
20 GBP is about $35 US? That's expensive.
regarding the copy-protected cds...
As an Electronics technician, I can assure you that the felt-tip marker approach will NOT damage your hardware.
the statement they make is grossly inaccurate.
here is what they say:
"It should be noted that using ink of any sort on the playing surface of the CD can cause loss of the entire contents of the CD. Introducing ink or foreign materials on the playing surface of a CD can also damage the CD player reading device. Consumers should be aware that any damaged media or corrupted media files caused by this hack may void any warranties for such media, the content contained thereon, or the playback or recording device. "
this is wrong, since the CD surface never comes in contact with the optical pick-up assembly.
What bold-faced liars!
I felt this needed to be addressed.
The flip side is that the CD didn't get played in an ampitheater first and garner millions to hundreds of millions of dollars before being released.
Of course, anyone will tell you that the CD makes jack for most artists. They make their money off concerts (which is about the best analogy to a movie theater release possible here), while buying the CD just lets you listen to the music when you want and pays (mostly) the record label. I don't support piracy, but I've also pretty much stopped buying music too (I listen to it much less as well - changing lifestyle).
The previous responder made some very good comments on DVD too.
I'm not surprised that the studio is trying a DVD release without MacroVision. Before DVD's came out, I owned a number of laserdiscs. I also rented a bunch when they started to become rare. I would video tape the ones I rented, even though they had MacroVision protection. My stereo head unit has an option to "enhance video" that basically eliminates MacroVision. I never had a problem taping these discs.
Now I've been bitten by the DVD bug- my wife and I have over 200 DVD's, and there's no end in sight. While I haven't tried copying any of them yet, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have any problem doing so. As for DVD piracy, what's the point? On average, we've paid something like $12.00 per movie (including tax & shipping). Where's the cost savings in piracy? With the original, I have the original case, all the special features, etc., at a price I'm willing to pay. In fact, we hardly go out to theaters anymore, since it's much cheaper to just buy the movie on DVD a few months later.
The dry fish swims alone.
I bought my Laser Disc player (you know those 12" video discs?) when the studios were pushing the technology by offering the software for half the price of vhs tape. (remember when new releases on vhs sold for $50-$70 each!). Then K-mart started discounting movies on vhs. Today whenever a new movie comes out you can find it discounted SOMEWHERE. Harry Potter was on discount for $9.99 ON DVD two weekends in a row by CompUsa! Makes you wonder what the markup on DVD's are.
The point is price matters. If the software is priced right it will sell. Why bother making a pirate copy (or buying one) when you can have the real thing cheaply.
"Personally, I've been furious with them since CDs came out costing twice as much as cassette tapes, despite the fact that they are many times cheaper to produce. I understand the theory that says I'm paying for the superior quality of CDs (yes, I agree that "quality" is a factor in price), but when the other major factor in "price" (that is: "cost to produce") is less than a thenth the cost to produce the other product, why am I paying two to three times as much?"
Don't you people know anything? How do you think prices of a product is set? Do you really think it's something like fixed_cost + variable_costs * 1.2? No, it's something like "To break even, we need to sell each sprocket @ $2, but the optinum price is $20, much higher and the sales will start to decline...". So as long as we buy their overpriced DVD's, the price is not going down. However, the Internet could change that.
Well, every other month we get a story on Slashdot about how Hollywood are using clusters of Linux machines to render the latest-greatest special effects/animations/etc, inbetween suing the hell out of free-software/open source programmers for daring create software to allow them to watch the movies they paid for and worked on the code to help create.
Hollywood's strategy is pretty clear: Take what's offered, never give back.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Yeah...had one of those for a few weeks. While the region/macrovision stuff was cool, when it couldn't play DVD's worth a shit, I took it back. It had lip sync issues, branching issues, and heaven knows what else.
I've heard they've fixed that in the newer releases, but the menu oddly disappeared.
According to the article, it costs 5c per disk to add Macrovision.
If Warner decided that the protection afforded by Macrovision costs more to implement than the expect losses to piracy... we know that Warner anticipates to lose the equivilant of less than 5c per disk in lost sales due to piracy.
Looks like they realised that:
a) the piracy market is not that big, after all and
b) folks who pirate wouldn't buy the product at full price anyway, even if there was no other option.
Looks like harsh economics wins out over foolish MPAA hyperbole.
-EvilMagnus
The first thing I did on my Sampo player was disable the Macrovision. Who knows, maybe one of these years I might even bother to connect my vcr to it.
I'm not sure if this really has to do with this, but I got that DVD at my local supermarket for about $10 (I honestly forget the exact number, but I brought the DVD and 12 cans of soda and the whole order totalled $15).
This is definitely the cheapest I've ever seen a DVD movie sell for, especially when it's a new release, a 2-disk set, and is a major movie actually worth seeing (sure, UHF was great, but I don't think it was a major movie, nor is it new)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
About all that commentary you added at the end. You're not that insightful, and it's not that interesting to read. Just shut up and post the damned story next time.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
One of their most popular recent movies. No copy protection. Headline in 3 months:
Pirated copies of Harry Potter rampant on the net
Silicon Valley (AP) Senator Hollings has begun pushing the need for even stronger copy protection and monitoring software built into every device, citing the recent explosion in pirated movie trading......
*Ahem*
As a guy who has personal videotapes going back to the 80's, and as a guy who has seen the quality of these tapes drop by orders of magnitude over time, and as a guy who would like to record them onto a digital media to prevent further degradation, and as a guy who relies on signal processing to clean said tapes up to make them worth watching again, I think I speak for everyone in similar circumstances when I say: Fuck you and the whores you rode in on, you New Scientist media bitch.
Signal cleaners have a useful purpose. They clean degraded signals. Entropy can, in this case, be compensated for by these useful little devices. And thank goodness for it, especially when an old tape is the *only* record of an event that may happen to be dear to somebody.
I mean, fuck, what am I supposed to do, ask my sister to get married again so I can record it on a DRM-compliant videocamera this time? Geez o'Pete!
Whose fault is it that the copy protection mechanism of choice relies on DESTROYING AN INTACT SIGNAL????
Barry Fox can be also bought by proponents of the copy protection racket, often disguised by job titles such as 'reporter' to keep within the realm of legitimacy.
GMFTatsujin
Reminds me of the bad old days when CDs came in enormous boxes that were the heights of records so they'd fit on the newly repurposed shelves. Somewhere along the way they switched over to just the jewel cases, because the boxes were wasteful (i.e. environmentally unfriendly). Now I see VHS height (actually larger) boxes for DVDs and can't help wondering why they don't switch to ordinary jewel boxes, except to slap more graphics on the front.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
This argument for raw bandwidth between the host and device is just dumb. Unless you have a massive RAID array sitting at the end of your SCSI or IDE bus you aren't even going to come close to saturating the bandwidth. When the data rate from the HDD doesn't exceed 20M/sec, anyone touting the merits of U320 SCSI over ATA-133 is just in a pissing contest over things that really don't matter.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
That sounds like EXACTLY the effect that Macrovision has on playback.
I used to see that frequently when I had two VCR's "daisy-chained" so that I could either record TV on the "first" VCR in the chain while watching a movie in the second, and for making archives of recorded TV episodes that I wanted to keep for awhile.
I was very irritated to discover that DVD's have Macrovision as well - you'll notice, I suspect, that most if not all DVD manuals explain that the player must be hooked directly to the television and not "chained" through the VCR, because, of course, we'd all be rampant pirates if we were allowed to get a clean signal through a VCR. Gosh, sure is nice of the MPAA to protect us from our obvious inherent criminal tendencies...(Macrovision has irritated me for nearly a decade now...)
Considering that if I'm patient, I should be able to get a genuine wide-screen legal DVD of this movie soon in the "previously viewed" bins or on sale somewhere for ~$14US, and considering that a GOOD video tape costs at least, say, $4US, I just couldn't picture myself making a low-quality "pirate" copy from DVD to VHS to save a whopping $10....
On a slightly more helpful note - you should be able to rig up a switch on the old TV of the same type they commonly sell for hooking up video game consoles. That means you'd have to reach around behind the TV to switch over to "DVD" to watch them, but at least you'd be able to bypass the VCR then and get a watchable signal from the Macrovision-mangled disks without having to unplug the satellite/VCR combination...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Time/Warner isn't the first major studio to release a DVD without macrovision encoding.
I discovered, while playing DVDs through my TV Out to the TVCR and using the RealMagic Decoder for my Netstream 2000 card in Linux, that none of the MGM DVDs I tried playing--several James Bond Special Editions, This Is Spinal Tap--had macrovision. This may have been to avoid cost, it may have been to satisfy the high-end cinephile folks who find Macrovision degrades their viewing experience, I don't know. But I do know they were the only DVDs I could watch using that version of the Netstream drivers. Because those DVDs weren't exactly the current mega-hits that Harry Potter is, I guess they passed below the press's radar.
Time/Warner is the first to do it on such a popular movie, though. I wonder if it will lead to anything?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I have a question - My PC has a DVD drive and a GeForce3 card with an S-video output. If I play a DVD and watch it through the S-Video output, is the signal Macrovisionized?
:) No, seriously, I'm just curious. Since PC's with such capability are becoming more common, this could mean that many more people have the theoretical ability to defeat Macrovision, without buying or modding anything extra.
I only ask because I want to set up a videotape piracy lab in my home.
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
I rented a movie once that had a big macrovision splash screen at the start. It said "Macrovision quality protection" What a joke.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
> Yes, it was. I recently took a course on the
> history of chemistry, and, apparently, some
> alchemists discovered what they presumed to be
> the elixir of life: the product resulting from
> several distillations of wine.
Yes, that seemed popular. Whiskey was originally called 'the water of life'; in fact, the word 'whiskey' is a mangled version of an ancient word for that.
Most Apex DVD players have a hidden menu which can be used to disable region checking and macrovision. I have an Apex AD-3201 and it has this feature. I used to have the original AD600A (or was that 500?) which also had this feature.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"