Die, macrovision, die!

[gwyn]

Today seems to be my stupid LJ post day, I guess. The very day I was "laid off" at work, during my lunch hour I'd bought a multiregion DVD player with the macrovision hack (called, so sublimely euphemistically, "VCR friendly") for vidding. If any of you vidder types need a player that plays other region discs, as well as a macrovision hack, I would definitely recommend this player and the company I bought it from, World Gift Center. They're a little goofy in that if you pay with PayPal, they send you a confirmation of payment, but they never tell you when/if your product has shipped or give you the tracking number, but damn if it doesn't just arrive as they said it would. The player itself is a very slim, nice little Daewoo unit, the DVD-5800, and World Gift Center hacks the anticopy code for you, so you don't have to pay extra, as I've seen at most places. At first I thought the macrovision hack wasn't working, because I had it hooked up to my TV and was trying to copy a disc onto a digital tape just to see if it'd work without dragging the unit into my vidding area, yet the camera wouldn't copy; once I did drag it in and hooked it up through the passthrough camera, it imported clips to the computer just fine. It says on the info that it doesn't play DVD-Rs, but I found it does indeed play some, just depends on the media you use and what was used to record it. It also plays VCDs and other types of discs, including audio.

I found it a lot harder to get a decent hacked player than I'd expected -- a lot of places are no longer advertising the VCR friendly players, and many of the places online are so shady they made me laugh out loud. So I looked for a place that would have the online BBB and VeriSign seals, etc., so that I'd feel a little better about buying from them. One of the few other places that offers all those things really ragged on the Daewoo and Sampo players, but honestly, outside of the usual goofy low-end Asian player problems (random barfs where it gets paralyzed, finicky remotes that barely seem to work), I think this thing is nice, myself. It's played everything I've thrown at it so far, even really complex discs, and it's been a blast watching the Professionals DVDs that alexfandra loaned me. I know not all of us are competent enough to rip clips, or can download shows and movies, on our computers, so this is a pretty inexpensive alternative and easy to use.

Speaking of vidses, the Miracles vid that feochadn and I showed at Vividcon is up at morgandawn's site. She is being so unbelievably generous with her space. If you're interested in seeing it, and you don't have her info and password yet, e-mail me at gwyn_r@livejournal.com and I can give it to you, again as long as you agree to abide by her terms.

And lastly, I promise, promise, promise that tomorrow I'm working on the semi-experimental BtVS fanfic, and will also try to get down some of the bones of the next chapter of Measure of a Man. I promise!

Comments

FYI for future DVD player purchases

[claudia-yvr.livejournal.com]

I found the easiest way to track down a good hackable player is by checking out DVDRhelp (http://www.dvdrhelp.com), where pretty much every player on the market is listed, along with any available region and macrovision hacks. I was pleased to discover that most DVD players can be hacked simply with a series of keystrokes on the remote control. People also submit reviews to the site, and these are tremendously helpful. Using this site, I was able to track down an excellent regionfree player that was selling pretty much everywhere for US$40 to US$50, including Wal-Mart and Fred Meyers. Since most downloads are now XviD and DivX, I've since splurged on a US$100 multiregion, macrovision-free player that can play AVIs.

Re: FYI for future DVD player purchases

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I'm such an incompetent nitwit about anything like doing a hack that I had to look for something that was hacked by the importer/seller. Even a firmware upgrade for a computer problem makes me break into a cold sweat and I'm filled with terror. I know there are some great cheap players that'll do any region, but that macrovision hack was scaring me a lot. I should just plan in the future to drive the machine up and have you help me do it! Hopefully this one will last for a bit, at least.

Re: FYI for future DVD player purchases

[claudia-yvr.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely give me a shout the next time you go shopping for a DVD player -- I'm more than happy to help!

Re: FYI for future DVD player purchases

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

DVDRhelp is a great resource. I went ahead and ordered from the Video Store gwyn recommended -- one of the challenges of doing your own hack, is that the hacks don't work for all models (even the same model). This happened with the Apex a few years back -- the next model disabled the keystroke hack, but users soon came up with solutions. You can now download software, burn it on CD, and load into the layer to open the backdoor.

Finding one "pre-made" with a warranty behind it has grown a bit difficult.

Thanks Gwyn.

Measure of a Man

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Gwen -

Venturing out of lurkdom to say Yea . . . more Measure of a Man. Any BtVS from you is a-okay with me.

Thanks -

Sheri

[deejay.livejournal.com]

And more Miracles vids would be orgasmic.





=P

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I actually found another song! It's just probably going to be a while before we can do it, but now with your VCDs, we'll have even more footage, so I'm kind of excited about the prospect!

Re:

[elz.livejournal.com]

YAY! I really enjoyed Darkness, Darkness, and when I finished watching it, I definitely felt like I'd love to see a sequel (in the loosest sense). There's so much great footage from the later episodes - I'd love to see what you'd do with it!

(And with Darkness, Darkness, it was great to finally see the vid after hearing so much about it from people who went to the con. It has a great rhythm to it, and the song is just perfect.)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'll pass that along to jo, as well. I'm so excited to have more footage to work with now. Not as great as a full series run would be, of course, but better than just six eps!

Your icons just keep getting more and more beautiful.

[corngirl-jo.livejournal.com]

I'm very interested in VCRs and DVDs that are able to do more than just the regular ones, because I have half of my stuff on PAL tapes, and the other half on NTSC, and then there are DVDs of both Regions, and I don't wanna have to give up any and replace it with the new coding. Can you explain to me, like to a moron, what is the macrovision hack exactly? What does it do?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

There are players, most often from smaller Asian countries like Singapore and Korea, that are modified to play discs from any region. It used to be that they were quite large, expensive, and came with these godawful huge plugs, but now they're all quite sleek. The Daewoo I bought was US$138 all totalled with shipping. I've seen some for cheaper, but not modified for macrovision. The nice thing about these players is that if you get a good solid one, it should automatically adjust for whichever region the discs are coded for, and also hook up to any TV, PAL or NTSC, and adjust itself. Some players still require you to do the complex hidden steps yourself.

Macrovision is the anticopy encryption that started on tape a number of years ago, and has since grown really challenging to get around on DVD. The hacks (whether on the device itself, or one you download off the net) will break the encryption and allow you to copy clips for vidding off of the DVDs. There is some software that you can use to rip clips directly into a computer, but I know a lot of people have trouble figuring it out, if they're like me, and for some of us, DLing anything is next to impossible with a bad connection.

So getting those DVD clips is a major source of fannish vidding problems, and hacked players have become a big deal. If you look at claudia_yvr's comment above, she gives the URL of a place where you can DL hacks for many current players. Some hacks will turn a single region cheapo player into a multiregion, and some will turn off macrovision, and some will do both. What you want to look for is one that will allow you to play any kind of disc (whether PAL or NTSC) with any kind of TV -- this can still trip people up, so be careful.

Unfortunately most of my shows are probably never coming out on DVD, so I'm still going to have to work from off-air taped source, but at least now I can do Firefly, Buffy, Due South, and Angel vids from such lovely source.

Re:

[corngirl-jo.livejournal.com]

This is a huge help, thank you. Must add it to my memories for future reference.

[binsoup.livejournal.com]

I've nothing intelligent to add to the thread. I just wanted to say that your icon reminded me how huge a TV-addict I was back when I was in high school. I loved MI5, and I remember being pissed when the local station stopped showing it.