technoguy

Macrovision is a company that creates electronic copy prevention schemes, established in 1983. The name is also sometimes used to refer to certain video copy prevention schemes developed by that company.

davidemarsh01

MacroVision is a video copy protection method for video playback equipment. First used on VHS tapes, later adapted for DVD's, VCD's and SVCD's. It is used for pre-recorded videomedia.

You can detect MacroVision, by simply trying to dubb a protected tape, the video that goes through the recording VCR will get dark and then normal again periodically. The picture may also become unstable.

Sometimes Macrovision signals resemble false synchronization, and some TV-sets mistake them for the real synchronization failures. Also colors may vanish from the top of the picture. It resembles very much a mistracked video-tape.

Some TV-sets do not like Macrovision; the top of the picture might be unstable all the time and the colors may flicker. Specially projectors and large screen TV-sets show this effect.

If you have a TV that has an adjustement for picture height or vertical hold, you can fiddle around with those. Macrovision signals can be seen as very bright and very dark regions (vertical bars) near the top of the picture.

Most modern DVD and VCR's have MacroVision.