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Nvidia Drivers Enforce Macrovision's Rules
Ant writes "According to 'Nvidia Macrovision DVD-TV rules forced on consumers', Nvidia drivers 41.09 and onwards include 'stringent checks' to comply with Macrovision requirements. That could mean if you have a TV encoder that does not support Macrovision, you may well get an error message depending on what DVD software player you are using, the company has said."
For those of us with older nvidia cards, this means we can't watch dvds anymore! thankfully you can use DVD Idle to get around this.
...for ATI.
Time for thanks for the DRI team, methinks.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
... binary drivers!
it's a good thing, older Nvidia drivers are so easily found.
...using 44.09 drivers under 2000.
Then again, I am using TVTool to get my Nvidia card to go TV-out in full-screen and without macrovision. Not that I need the last one, never interested in copying DVD to VHS anyway.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Somebody will keep hacking the reference drivers and put them online.
Right now I'm using a different tool to circumvent various dvd protections.
DVDIdle, no regions, no Macrovision, no nothing and it even lets me skip those annoying warnings "Thou shalt not reproduce this disc"
This is the sig that says NI (again)
The article is over an year old. (March 20, *2003*)
Current nVidia drivers are 56.xx series.
'News' indeed...
And resists such attempts to regulate its behaviour.
By the same token, producers will continue to try to force their consumers into certain directions.
It's just part of the grand evolutionary struggle between producers and consumers that has resulted in such wonderful things as P2P and the DCMA.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I guess DRM is being enforced by the large manufactors bit by bit, I guess that in 5 years all the software/hardware from the large vendors will have DRM build in and will be enforcing it!
And in the long run this will mean you can't even decide for your self what you can do with your computer/software, no this decision will be made by your vendor!
1. People will get around it as fast as they bring it in.
2. Nvidia will sell a few less units because of this, (what a foolish business strategy). God, have they not heard of a successful strategy called "Ethics?, profit is prime"
3. Macrovision is a bit pointless when you can rip the dvd straight from the dvdrom drive. Having it there will save the film industry sum in total ZERO.
These obvious statements have been brought to you by another anonymous coward.
Recent versions of WinDVD choke frequently choke on my system with Macrovision errors. They don't seem to happen every time though. This also affects any product that ends up using WinDVD's DShow filters. A rather old Mediamatics DVMatics player works fine every time though. Their DShow filters still work really well after all these years too. Great little player. I have a GeForce DDR 256 in my system. I used TVTool 8 to toggle the TV out on and off, which got the WinDVD stuff working at one point.
Macrovision is a company that developed the a copy protection system to protect VHS tapes from bieng copied. EVERY "new" VCR has the Macrovision system designed into it.
This system messes with the video signal that leaves
the device in such a way as to confuse the AGC (automatic gain control) in he video signal receiver (TV), which in turn screws up the picture.
All new digital products that output an analog video signal will/should have this system designed into them, to prevent the analog signal bieng copied.
Thios includes cable, satellite boxes, video cards etc.
Don't make your problems my problems!
slysoft's AnyDVD.
runs in the background like a service and stealthily removes all region/macrovision bullshit, works like a charm on my Ti4400 GF4 + latest 56.72 drivers
It is much funnier to watch people get all wound up over this like it actually impacts their petty, misinformed existences.
Copied from here:
I was just reading about the DVD player included with the ATI Radeon All In Wonder series. It says that screen captures and other things I might want to do will not function if the DVD is copy protected. Here is the quote from the ATI document -
Recording from a Source Encoded with Analog Copy Protection
The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER? products detect analog copy protection on the input source and will refuse to capture video from such sources. The record button automatically becomes disabled. Further, TV-ON-DEMAND is not possible with an analog copy protected source.
Since for all practical purposes there are only two video-card manufacturers and both of them enforce Macrovision DRM, I have no other choice than avoid buying DVDs, at least the legit ones. So it's DivX or DVD-R from P2P or a pirated DVD.
P.S. I wish there was a digital freedom fighters group with a PayPal account.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I have used a cheap NVidia Riva TNT since about 2 years; Linux drivers were buggy and hanged the machine from time to time; same for FreeBSD drivers - they made machine unstable.
As I've bought a bigger CRT display (21'), it came out, that there is some "ghosting" effect on that cheap NVidia, and I need to replace it with something better, just because my cheap clone was based on the hardware unsuitable for big displays. I have heard, that ATI somehow "supports" opensource communities - or at least gives them more information, than NVidia team.
I've bought Radeon 9200 and tried FreeBSD's 4.9 DRI + XFree86 4.3.0 drivers with it.
I was stunned. Everything worked as expected, no problems at all, no hangs, no sudden reboots, no nothing.
Of cource, NVidia is making some progress in the drivers stability; also, their equipment for sure gets better each day - but I was so shocked with the stability & ease of setup of opensource ATI drivers, that I am not going to buy/recommend any other graphics cards.
The driver knows a DVD is being played because in most cases the DVD software will tell the driver to use macrovision. Note that only DVDs with macrovision enabled will be affected, as macrovision is an optional feature. If you use software such as xine or mplayer that does not tell the driver to enable macrovision, or you use something like AnyDVD that makes all DVDs look as if they have no CSS, no macrovision, and are for all regions, you will be fine. You could also hack the software player itself, but why bother when you can get something like the AnyDVD software does it transparently.
Why bother to record from a standalone DVD player when you can just rip the DVD using DVD Decrypter (and DVDShrink if necessary). It will be much better quality as there is no analog conversion.
for fear of reprisal towards them/him, but TVTool works just fine for disabling Macrovision with NVIDIA cards. At least with the GF3 in my HTPC machine I get no complaints from any DVD player software with TVTool's Macrovision disable option turned on. And I've been updating its drivers with every official release up until 53.03, just got lazy with the post-53.03 releases cuz everything works.
EFF
PayPal accepted, amongst other methods.
I tend to use a lot of odd/eclectic combinations of hardware. Once, I had an old Apple II RGB monitor (with an RCA-style plug in the back) which I used to display DVD video output from an old Creative Labs DxR2 decoder. Until I disabled Macrovision, I could not watch the movies I legally paid for (<sarcasm>from Wal-Mart, like a Good American(TM)</sarcasm>). So I had to break the law to watch what I legally paid for. (For the record, I was also using a Linux box to play the DVD, so <sarcasm>obviously I'm some sort of evil hacker criminal</sarcasm>).
,<sarcasm>'Consumers' have no right to open up products they paid for</sarcasm>) and rebuilt it into a generalized RCA-to-coax adaptor suitable for use on the DVD player, I couldn't play my (again legally paid for at a Good American Retail Outlet(TM)) DVDs.
At another point, I had a set-top DVD player, and was trying to use it with an old TV player which had only a coaxial RF input. So at first I passed the signal through a VCR, which of course made Macrovision wreck the signal (image fading in and out, just like in the previous example). Until I scrapped an old Nintendo RF adaptor (which is probably DMCA-illegal for some convoluted reason also-- I mean, hell
So, let's review. Macrovision has made it more difficult for me to play legally-owned DVDs. And it's pissed me off even more at the MPAA for getting in bed with those fucktards. So... what, again, does Macrovision do to decrease piracy? I can testify that it makes me more interested in disobeying the MPAA cartel's stupid rules, since all it seems to do is annoy people and force them to buy (or build) more equipment...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
...I always buy whatever card gives me the most bang for the buck. I could care less about Macrovision since no DVD I watch ends up having it anyway regardless.
Based on what I'm hearing about NV40 (16 pipelines, MPEG encoding acceleration, etc.), it seems that Nvidia will be getting my business again this summer, and that hasn't happened for a couple of years now. I currently own a Radeon 9800 Pro.
I suppose it all depends on your application, but it seems silly to diss a card just because the rules that already exist are being enforced -albeit more stringently. Besides, do you really believe that the drivers are 'unhackable'?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It requires player support, so no. I highly doubt Xine/Ogle/MPlayer will implement Macrovision.
slightly off-topic rant but since i did some upgrading i havnt been able to got my (ati all-in-wonder very old pro) tv card to work dual screen so i just took it out, my computer doesnt have a dvd drive so i use my PS2 as a dvd player connected up to the tv-card, but now i cant! so off i go to the tv (which is also very old) and find it only has RF-in, no problem, connect the PS2 to video-machine to TV to watch a DVD and hey ho, fucking macrovision kicks in, what am i supposed to do? now im not making this up why would i? i love bit-torrent as much as anyone else, but why the fuck should i suffer and not be able to use the stated features of something ive paid for when it did not say clearly on the box "WILL NOT PLAY DVDs UNLESS CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO YOUR TV" and it obviously does not adhere to any video specifications, as far as im concerned video equipment that uses macrovision is _not_ standard and should either carry a very clear warning or should not be able to even have composite/scart/s-video connectors on it! anything else is mis-representation and a lie to the consumer - i think most people would choose non-cripled hardware if given an educated choice.
btw clear warning doesnt mean pt.6 font next to "all rights reserved"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I never play from the source disc. None of my backups have Macrovision, so I never have to worry about it!
You can stick Macrovision on a composite video signal (maybe even on an S-Video signal) but when you come to modulate it onto RF, the extraneous signals just overload the modulator and end up not coming out of the receiver. Since many older tellies still have no SCART socket, only an RF input, VCRs and cable / satellite boxes will need an RF output for awhile yet. And if RF modulation defeats macrovision, there's no point including it in the first place.
NTL's pay-per-view movie service is Macrovision-crippled, but Macrovision strippers are readily obtainable from camcorder specialists {they're needed in order to watch macrovision-crippled cassettes/DVDs on most professional-grade monitors}.
As an aside, what happens if your device's internal macrovision-crippler goes faulty and stops generating the Macrovision spikes? If you never tried to do anything with it that the manufacturers didn't want you doing, then you might never find out it wasn't working!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"but when you come to modulate it onto RF, the extraneous signals just overload the modulator and end up not coming out of the receiver"
....
The RF output of a VCR recorder does have macrovision, RF modulation does not affect the operation of macrovision (macrovision is designed with this in mind). Macrivision's protection scheme works mainly by sending a
"Macrovision is a videotape copy protection for VHS video cassette recorders [24]. It is used on pre-recorded videotapes, and it seems to be more common in North America than in Europe. It is also used in the new Settop Boxes to protect the outcoming signals against copying (e.g. DSS and Digicipher). When dubbing a protected tape, or copying a protected analogue signal, the picture that has gone through the recording VCR will get dark and then normal again periodically. The picture may also become unstable when it is at its darkest. Some televisions do not like Macrovision either. The top of the picture might be unstable all the time and the colors may flicker."
from http://web.quick.cz/pejovideo/eng/how_work.htm
"Macrovision(TM) is a copy-protection scheme for analog
NTSC, PAL, YUV, and RGB video signals, commonly used
in the consumer market. Copy protection is implemented by
modifying the video signal so that an analog VCR cannot
track the video signal for recording, but a TV will still display
a normal image. DVD players, digital settop boxes for cable
and satellite systems, and VCRs all include Macrovision
copy protection."
from http://www.intersil.com/data/an/an9806.pdf
Don't make your problems my problems!
The Content Trust(tm) has decreed that "the analog hole must be plugged." They must somehow enjoy this quixotic quest, chasing all over the countryside playing whack-a-mole with the work of so many individuals (and the products of so many companies so much bigger than they). And they've even showed up at nvidia's doorstep. "Look, you want to be in the video card business, not the lawsuit business. Are you sure you want to endanger your relationship with Mr. Capone?"
Meet our friend Mr. Macrovision. Phew, another glorious victory for the Content Trust(tm) over the Stupid/Evil Consumer(tm)!
What's positively hilarious about this is that no one gives a shit about copying content back to analog. Hello - it's 2004, people. This perfectly exemplifies the stuck-in-the-distantly-receeding-past mentality these guys have. Analog hole? What about the gaping digital hole? People who bother are copying straight to their computer! Fully 3/4 of the people reading this probably haven't used their VCRs since they last dusted off the video store's copy of Capricorn One.
Yet the Trust still races around showing everyone who's boss. That Macrovision protection is important! Ignore it at your peril! Hah.
All this will accomplish is that more people who use their computer with their TV are going to have a problem.
And those people will get angry. Who wouldn't? What an insult! They will soon learn about the foreign, boring field of intellectual property law - it's neither so foreign nor so boring anymore. They'll also learn about the messy campaign the Content Trust(tm) is running to hijack it.
They will find that, to watch their own videos, they need to go into the back alley, to meet the Dread Pirates(tm)... only, look how friendly and helpful they are. "I think I'll remember them - I'll probably be back again soon."
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Just a small note, there are cases where dvd + mplayer + tvout will result in mactrovision being used. Read the mplayer documentation.
On the PC connected exclusively to a TV for DVD watching, I can't watch DVDs... because a TV is connected.
My first reaction is, "why the hell do I even buy DVDs in the first place when I can download this shit from usenet or IRC and view it with all of the quality and none of the hassle?", not "gee where's my standard DVD player to watch this?".
As a gullible idiot who legitimately buys software and entertainment media I envy the warez doodz more and more every day. With every "insert original CD to play" and "playback disabled" message I question my purchases. Every time I am forced to apply a crack to achieve the same level of playability pirates have, my sympathy expands.
There are alternatives to Nvidia. No one is forcing you to use Nvidia hardware.
WTF? Who needs this kind of preaching, guy? I doubt many that bought an Nvidia card were aware that this would happen, and I don't see anyone defending nvidia's specific decision here.
I won't be buying an nvidia card again but I'm not about to just throw away the $300 one I have and buy a new one because of shitty drivers. Your message was totally unhelpful and borderline trolling.
Not sure if this story is a repeat or not, but didn't any of you notice this story is a year old. Some of us with Nvidia cards knew about this a while ago. The date on the article is 2003, not 2004. And the date of the drivers should have given you a clue also as the drivers mentioned are 41 series... Nvidia is on 56.xx now... just something to think about
Don't take it personally, I 'm like this all the time.
Listen,
We get beat up by everyone for "piracy" - when in fact all we want to do is to do the right thing.
This means that if you want to actually pay for a DVD, and watch it, even though you don't have a TV hooked up, the stupid Macrovision prevents you to do that, meaning, you HAVE to use hacking tools, just to enjoy something you paid for.
This is plain bullshit. If someone wants to make a VHS copy of their DVD, LET THEM! I thought that making analog copies of digital works was covered under fair use! Seriously, WTF? As a result of them blocking this potential use of technology, I can't watch the goddamn Back To The Future Box set I shelled out some bucks for.
So, the only option I am left with is to copy the DVDs, De-Macrovision them, and then give my Big "F U" to the studios, by selling the useless discs.
I am not going to buy a new video card to watch them, and I am not going to relegate watching the movie solely to my television, I use a computer as the primary watching apparatus.
Peace out.
That sounds like the excuse people get when they protest about Bush taking away their freedoms. Nobody's forcing you to live here you know, you could move to Canada hippie. The fact of the matter is, in the desktop graphics world Nvidia and ATI cards are the only viable options. The rest of the stuff out there is crap hardware-wise. Unfortunately both of these platforms are encumbered with binary-only drivers.
Sure, there was a day when Matrox ruled the roost, but the days of 2D-only use are long gone by most people. Anyone hoping to play games will need to purchase an Nvidia or ATI card. Matrox is only good for spreadsheets, word processing, and CAD.
Professional VCRs typically have a TBC built in; you can also get a standalone TBC. Either way, they're not particuarly cheap, but if you're going to be backing up a large VHS library, it's probably a good investment.
See the ArsTechnica Guide to Capturing, Cleaning, & Compressing Video and the sci.electronics.repair Macrovision FAQ for more info.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
This actually, definately, 100% explains why my DVD player absolutely refuses to play certain DVDs.
My decoder doesn't honor Macrovision...but if the drivers do, it fucks up stuff.
I've had this for a while, some dvds refusing to play with PowerDVD, simply because my GF2 MX400 PCI has a TV-OUT I've never used. That TV-OUT is on by default, NVidia provides no way to disable it or turn it off, so they simply took my choice from me.
That is the last NVidia product I will ever buy, even if it means I have to live with sub-par (which isn't the case currently) hardware.
Back to the point, VideoLAN had come to the rescue. Plays all my dvds, to their full extent, it's free, practical and light.
Oh. Cross platform too...
/. Where the truth
Well, here's a idea.
Stop buying DVDs.
They're not water or air, they're fucking DVDs. The world will not end if you do not own the entire 12 season of the Simpsons in full digital with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. And they have made it crystal clear to me and I'd assume to you that they do not want our business. Why still give it to them?
Nvidia Macrovision DVD-TV rules forced on consumers
Cuts out other TV encoders
By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 20 March 2003, 10:19
In other news, Reagan beats Carter, Soviets back down over Cuban missle issue, and WR Hearst says the USS Maine was sunk my a Spanish mine.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
p(L)=M(L)/M --> M(L)=M*p(L)
given: p(L)=const., M increasing.
result: M(L) also increasing.
Number of machines increased, percentage steady = Linux machines increased. qed.
Thank you Nvidia for making the decision easy! ATI, here I come! Of course, by the time I can AFFORD a 9800 Pro ATI might have a similar thing in place. 8^/
When I play DVDs on my PC with the nvidia card I sometimes have to walk away and I will lock the computer. When I come back and unlock it the DVD will no longer play until the next reboot because it says the TV out is active eventhough it's not. Even if it was, isn't that thee point of having a TV out so you can use it for multimedia applications?
No, Matrox cards are also used in the digital video and film industry, with their Parhelia cards ruling the roost. Their stuff works great with Final Cut Pro, AfterEffects, and Shake, but then you would be paying a lot more for your video card ($800 and up) than for any 'gaming' card.
I recently rebuilt the Linux kernel on my laptop, so I thought it would be worthwhile to get the latest Nvidia driver. Having done so, I found that their installer had deleted all copies of nvidea.o under /lib/modules, not just a previous copy for the kernel I was still testing. That means I lost the video driver for the stable kernel I wanted to use between tests. Ouch!
This has nothing to do with Macrovision, but it's another reason to dislike or distrust Nvidia.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
and I hadn't heard about this. If it's not a dupe, don't complain. I'm glad for the article and the discussion. I've seen several helpful links to software that works around this issue. I was planning on getting an Nvidia card with TV out soon, and now I know to watch out for this problem and what to do if I get hit by it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I have been thinking a lot about the /. article about a week or so ago that concerned what the world would be like without Microsoft. I saw another article elsewhere that was talking about business software, spreadsheets, and the like, and how the current crop of spreadsheets has affected the way business thinks about these kinds of things.
And I can relate to the "unpopular opinion" concept that the parent post has just talked about, because I was just feeling that way yesterday. I guess the best we can do is to try to present our opinions respectfully and honestly.
So here it is:
If you want to play a DVD, get a DVD player. That's what they are for.
Certainly, there are many other issues, and wouldn't it be nice if my computer could do this, or do that, and so on, but I have been thinking a LOT about what a computer is, what its place is in my life, and maybe just redefine a little bit what a computer really is, and what the most effective things to do with a computer are.
Personally, I would rather watch the DVD on a couch, with a plasma screen, with larger speakers and the surround sound. The entire thing of DVD on your computer, or music on your computer, or other things on your computer, which you had to purchase seperately before - it's a "something for nothing" proposition, kind of. Is watching DVDs on a computer just really cool or something, or is it just done just to do it, just for fun - of course there is nothing wrong with that, but I just see a DVD as something that belongs on a plasma with surround sound, with a nice couch. Of course, you may not be able to afford these things, but what I am trying to say is that "computers", as such, are (or should) be about more than just saving money because you can't afford nice things.
Would it be better that we turn computers into DVD players by crippling them and turning them into something that is no longer a computer? I would rather have a computer be a computer, "computer" still being something that we probably will keep redefining, and something that actually, lots of people don't really need as much as they think they do, or maybe it's more like they don't need it as bad as the big computer firms need them to buy millions of computers.
For instance, if there were small airborne transportation vehicles that you could buy, the sky would be all different. Setting up traffic lanes in the air, crashes in mid-air that come through your roof, things like that. Maybe it's better to not have everyone flying around in their personal aircraft, and to reserve aircraft for longer distances. There are many folks that feel that there are also too many cars, and that the focus has become one of car companies selling more of them, oil companies selling more fuel, "in the name of jobs". It's a stone age - it's a stone age.
It's one thing to say "I have the RIGHT to play DVDs on my PC" - that's something in and of itself. It's another to say "I NEED to play DVDs on my PC". Wouldn't it be better with a nice couch , a plasma screen, and a high-end surround sound setup? To some extent, the same thing can be said about mp3 files and crappy computer speakers, although listening to music while you study or surf the net or are doing some kind of boring work in the office IS a nice touch. But watching a DVD is a fairly all-encompassing experience - it pretty much takes up all your senses. You have to stop what you are doing, more or less, to watch a DVD.
I think that part of making computers integrate better with our lives is to not have one thing try to do everything. That's actually the whole Unix philosphy, GNU Coreutils, piping commands from simple building blocks, from one stdout to another stdin, instead of having one single monolithic application that takes an hour to just fire up. Split it up. DVD players cost $100 sometimes, sometimes even less. Who doesn't have a TV? I would rather that the manufacturers don't cripple the PC than go out of their way to bend the PC just so that you can p
Actually, I didn't have much choice. I bought a laptop that I otherwise liked and only later found out it had an Nvidia chip. Next time I'll check the chip more closely, but for a laptop you have fewer choices than if you roll your own desktop machine.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
Now, I'm not going to scrap the few nvidia cards I have. I'll just move them as needed to non-multimedia machines such as servers and workstation/gaming machines I build for family members.
Whether or not there are enough people like me to have an economic impact on nvidia's bottom line is another question. I don't really care as long as there are alternatives.
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.