I considered this more of a computer question because of the knowledge possibly needed to answer this question. Surely I can't be alone in this issue...
I have lots of older VHS movies that I want to convert to DVD because we travel so much now and want to take them with us. So I bought (from Costco) a VHS/DVD-RW unit that is designed to copy one format to the other. Problem is every time I put my a VHS into it and try it, it says that the tape is copy protected and will not let me do it!!!! ARGH!! My understanding is that what I want to do is perfectly legal. These copies are for MY use. The VHS tapes are trash when I am done; nobody would want VHS anymore anyway to worry about selling them if I wanted to!
Is there a way around this? What about a separate player to connect to the DVD-RW? I'll be getting my new computer in a week or two and it will also have a DVD-RW on it; will that hook up to the VHS player and go around this?
Any ideas or other advice is welcome. What I want to do is perfectly legal, isn't it?
If you are trying to do it legally than you are wasting your time because it is illegal to copy any movie. Thats what copyright laws are for. Any movie that you buy from a store will be copy protected.
It is not illegal to make a backup copy of a movie or a CD or anything else even if it is copyrighted, as long as the copy is for your own use. The courts in the US have stated this again and again.
Now that doesn't mean that the manufacturer can't use means to make it difficult to copy the media, and of course they do.
if you have, or can get from a friend, a vcr, you can try hooking it to the dvd if it has the connections. might work, and the older the vcr the better probably.
if you are getting a new computer, you would need a video capture card, or a video card that has the options to capture video.
how to:
http://video-editing-software-review...hs-to-dvd.html
You will run into copy protection roadblocks even with video capture cards. I know because I often have to copy tapes to our education server at work, and I have never had any success copying Macrovision protected tapes.
There are capture cards that can bypass Macrovision. I believe Canopus makes one, but it is not cheap. I have read of devices that can bypass Macrovision, but I can't say whether or not they are legal to buy :shrug:
I had success a few years ago copying macrovision protected tapes by playing them on a 20 year old vcr I stole from my parents when I bought them a newer one. I never could figure out why that worked.
The circuitry that the Macrovision signal is meant to confuse (AGC or automatic gain control) is absent in most older VCRs.
Yes. Like Racraft said, it is legal to make one backup copy for yourself as long as it's for your own use.
I do it all the time with my old videos.
The vast majority of my stuff can be copied over to DVD, but I have found that alot of the newer videos do have some protections and will not let me.
Good luck.
Originally Posted by assemblo
If you are trying to do it legally than you are wasting your time because it is illegal to copy any movie. Thats what copyright laws are for. Any movie that you buy from a store will be copy protected.
I'm surprised you haven't deleted this post yet. All three sentences are wrong and misleading. I thank the others for their informative posts.
The first movie I copied over using my new device was my tape of Star Wars Episode I. It worked flawlessly. However, all my other tapes so far have had this copy protection, I still don't know why the one Star Wars tape didn't, all the other Star Wars tapes did, go figure.
I also now have one of the two laptops we are going to buy. My wife and I will each have one for use and travel. We can afford this because we choose to live a lifestyle of living in a paid-for travel trailer in between our 6-month foreign assignments and during this time we make some decent income as electricians and weldors. Anyway, my wife just got a new HP widescreen laptop with a DVD burner. My Toshiba Tablet PC with DVD burner is in the mail. What are the best ways to hook up a VCR/DVD player to our laptops? We will also want a TV tuner for the laptops as well; will this be the same device? Any recommendations from personal experiences? I would prefer a USB connection, as only the HP has a PCMCIA slot.
I've seen some boxes that claim macrovision removal for between $70 and $120 so far. Anyone have experience with these? Looks like to use them, I won't be able to use my all-in-one VCR/DVD, though, since I'd need cables to put the box in between the two devices.
Only the guys that want to cheat and break the law can afford to do this and make the hassle worth it, huh? That figures, too.
what is the brand/model of your combo vcr/dvd?
Originally Posted by tae
what is the brand/model of your combo vcr/dvd?
It's a Daewoo DVD Recorder/VCR, Model DVRS04/DVRS05, from Costco.
Sorry,but it looks like that one may not be able to do it. alot of dvd players are hackable, meaning that you can either access hidden menu options to turn things on or off, like macrovision, or you can update the firmware, usually downloading a file and burning it to dvd,and then playing it in the dvd player.
you can look here:http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers....Search=Search
for a list of players that can be hacked and alot of great info including how to's.
I would find a decent dvd burner for probably the same or less than those boxes, and hack it.
here's some faqs about macrovision:http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.11
Macrovision creates problems for most TV/VCR combos
You know that little tab\hole on the front of the tape, ya put a piece of masking tape on that.
had the same problem with mine
Welcome
Tags: legally, copying, movies, copy movie, copy protected, Star Wars, your time, afford this, also have, around this
