Cranky Callers to Target Disney

wired news ^ | 8.13.03 | Katie Dean

[Grig]

"I don't have a DVD burner but I certainly would find it easy to hook up some RCA plugs between the DVD player and the VCR. Not too tough."

True, but you probably wont get a watchable result. Most movies have Macrovision activated. What that does is send a signal to the VCR that messes up the image recorded. There are devices you can get to filter it out when recording but if you are going to spend money, you might as well just get a DVD-R burner.

[Grig]

My understanding is that the reaction turns the plastic of the disk dark so the data on it can no longer be read, it doesn't turn to goo.

[Timesink]

I railed against these when they were first announced, mainly for technical reasons (they won't stop people from duplicating DVDs, nobody will bother to recycle them ("incentives" or not), and the DVDs will fail to work at all so often that people will start avoiding them like the plague once word gets out). But if these Loony Leftists are so against the concept, I may go out and rent a few - and then just THROW THEM AWAY, BWA-HA-HAAA! - purely to piss off these Environazis.

[gitmo]

Really? I've never encountered a problem copying movies. (For backup purposes, of course.)

[bd476]

"So how much energy is used returning the traditional DVDs to the rental store?

Seems like throwawy DVDs might actually be the evironmentally friendly solution?!"

Great point. We spend $1.78/gallon now driving back and forth to our "local" video rental store.

Depending on how many miles per gallon our car uses, how our car is running, these trips to the "local" video rental store equals even more petrol dollars for the... oh dear... don't let the environmentalists hear about this. They'll outlaw video rental stores, next.

[Grig]

A lot of older VCR's are not keyed to read that signal, and some DVD players can be hacked to not send it. Also, you won't see the distortion while recording, only when you go to play back the VHS tape.