Disabling Macrovision with DVD-Out on G400?

[TurboCMinus]

Maybe this has been answered 1000 times somewhere, and I'm just an idiot, but I swear I've been looking forever and have never found a good clear answer to this:

How can I disable macrovision once and for all, so I can play DVD's on my TV??????????????????

I have Win98FE, PowerDVD 3.0, Matrox Marvel G400. I'd prefer to use PowerDVD if possible, since I like it, but whatever player I have to use to get around Macrovision I guess I can use. I know there's some kind of hack for video tools 1.54, but I have to wonder if that would only affect INPUT? Would driver patches even affect macrovision on DVD playback? I don't understand completely how everything works.

Well, instead of speculating further, I'll just wait for more knowledgable people to set me straight. Thanks in advance.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

are you running the output to the tv via your vcr?

[Goc]

If you plan on using PowerDVD 3.0 then download DVD Genie, go to the PowerDVD tab, and press Run player... 100% disables Macrovision...

[TurboCMinus]

!!!

MAN!! It works! After all this searching and it was that easy... :|
THANKS!!!

And now, another Q (although this is now probably in the wrong section): how on earth can I take ACCURATE screen caps of a DVD? PowerDVD does have screen-cap, but the quality is lacking. Conventional screen-capture doesn't work with DVD, because it uses video memory or something. I'm wondering if the DVD player coders lower the quality deliberately to avoid getting sued for copyright violation for 100% perfect screen capture... :P

[TurboCMinus]

Strike that, it doesn't work!!

No, it doesn't work. DVD Genie does not remove macrovision. I only THOUGHT it worked because it just so happens that the DVD I just got doesn't have macrovision. But upon realizing this possibility, I went and tried the old standby - Office Space - and sure enough, macrovision is still there. And I couldn't see ANY options in DVD Genie to remove it. On the DVD Genie website he even talks about how removing it "would be illegal and you won't find anything like that here." He's as cowardly as the rest.

So I don't know who told you DVD Genie did this, but they are painfully wrong. There HAS to be a way though. What about the 1.54 driver thing? I know there's a hack for the 1.54 matrox g400 vid drivers to remove macrovision, but would that even affect DVD playback or only affect capture? Let me know.

And to the question several posts above, YES I have to go through my VCR to my TV, since my TV actually has SCREW inputs (not even a coax let alone A/V.) And no it isn't junk, the picture is excellent, just cause something is old doesn't mean it's worthless. I even tried one of those "RF boxes" to bypass the VCR, but the quality was PITIFUL. I really shouldn't even have tried it though, because it's unforgivable to spend even one penny as a result of the macrovision b-stards.

[Wombat]

He's as cowardly as the rest.

Easy there. Are <B>you</B> volunteering to pay his legal bills? Are <B>you</B> doing anything to get legislation like the DMCA repealed? That's what I thought. He's already writing a great program, and does not wish to get arrested for it. Put up or shut up.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I second that Wombat... the programmer has no responsibility to help you remove microvision, especially through risking himself being caught.

Anyways. When you say accuracy of screenshots are you referring to the lack of vivid colour you get when playing back DVDs on PC comparing to TV? If that's the case I hope you are aware of the fact that almost all graphics card (except for Parhelia) uses an 8-bit decoder rather than a 10/12-bit decoder found on standalone players... so i guess the DVD picture quality on PC is not as good as standalone players. Also... TV resolution is very low, the dot pitches on TVs are very rough, plus the fact that you usually watch TVs far away on coaches... while on PC u view at high resolutions, fine dots, and very close to monitor/TV... so maybe these are reasons why you are not getting the precisions you want with DVDs.

Just my guess.... please points out any errors i made. It's almost 2am in toronto... i can't think anymore... better get some sleep nite!

[TurboCMinus]

Macrovision

The program is already freeware. If I were him, I'd modify the prog to kill macrovision, and spread it around the net anonymously - he could even call it a hacked version etc. It could be done easily, and he'd never get in trouble for it. Also, he's already killing region encoding, isn't he worried about THAT? He could get sued for that too.

As for the screenshots, no, what I'm talking about is that ON the PC, IN PowerDVD, the screen cap file that PowerDVD makes is lower in quality than the paused picture on the screen itself. It looks washed out. The picture is sitting there, paused, on the screen, and that has been decoded by PowerDVD, but there's no way to access it externally (that I know of) because it's only in the video memory. But there is no physical reason why PowerDVD would be unable to make a screen cap of identical quality to the paused picture that it has already displayed! So I wondered if any other software DVD players made accurate screen caps.

And yes, I know DVD's look better on the TV, that is the main reason I WANT the DVD-out capability to work.

[dZeus]

if you want to make screencaptures, the best quality probably would be achieved by dumping the VOBs from the DVD to the HDD (and you can remove macrovision from the DVD as well in that step), and then use DVD2AVI to watch the VOBs and make screencaptures.

[Wombat]

The program is already freeware. If I were him, I'd modify the prog to kill macrovision, and spread it around the net anonymously - he could even call it a hacked version etc. It could be done easily, and he'd never get in trouble for it. Also, he's already killing region encoding, isn't he worried about THAT? He could get sued for that too.

Well, that just shows what you know. He hasn't released the source, so the only likely "hacked" way to do it would be a poke of the binary. If it were that easy, somebody would have done it by now. Anything else would require a recompile, which would obviously implicate him.

And no, disabling region coding is not illegal. In fact, in many countries, region coding has been ruled illegal (as it should be).

[Rob(QG)]

Are any of the techniques here any use?

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/macrovision_software.html

[Goc]

Funny, but the known trick of running PowerDVD 3.0 via DVD Genie's "Run player" button works perfectly for me... That's the only reason why I still use PowerDVD3.0 because the trick won't work with newer versions of the program.
I connect G400 to my TV through a Sherwood Newcastle AV reciever that's Macrovision "friendly" and the only way I killed Macrovision is through DVD Genie...
Sorry it doesn't work for you... Are you sure you're doing everything right?

[TurboCMinus]

PowerDVD continued...

Rob: Neither of those progs are free.

Goc: DVD Genie says that my PowerDVD version is 3.0.1114. My version of DVD Genie is 4.10 What are yours?

What else is there to "do right"? You open it and click "Run". Unless there's some option in DVD Genie that I am not seeing, but again, the creator specifically says he will not disable macrovision. Sure is mysterious that yours gets disabled. But, not saying it's impossible that he could have added that type of thing secretly in an undocumented way. But I see no evidence of it here. The DVD I tried which refuses to give up its macrovision is Office Space. If you happen to have access to this movie, try it on yours and let me know. Perhaps some macrovision enabled movies are harder to beat than others? In the meantime I will try some of my other movies to see if it is able to beat the MV in any of them.

Oh, also, what vid card do you have? Again, I have the Matrox Marvel G400, and I don't believe I have installed any hacks/patches on any of my drivers to disable macrovision that way (and I assume that only affects capture.) I had messed with it in the past, and was able to successfully do that to disable macrovision on CAPTURE, but then later I updated my drivers to try to fix stability problems. Are your drivers also MV patched?

[TurboCMinus]

Further testing...

Dogma and Dancer in the Dark also retain their macrovision. That's all the MV enabled titles I have right now. "Then why do you want to do this?" Gee it would be nice to watch them on my TV when I rent them.

Goc, let me know what versions of things you have.

[MetalCartman]

Have a look at www.dvdidle.com