I bought a DVD recorder and tried to copy a movie with it, but it didn't work. Why?

Question

I hooked it up to my 5 disc Panasonic DVD player and tried to copy a movie, but a box came up on the TV saying that it cannot be copied because it is copywrited material. Is there any way around this?

Answer 1

You probably can't copy this because the player you are using has macro vision encoding built in.

Here is a link about macro vision:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision

There is a way around this, but it normally involves having to buy a DVR or DVD player that does not use macro vision or has had its macro vision HW "turned off".

You may be able to try to play the DVD in a computer and get around the macro vision that way, but again, you will likely have to buy some software. SW available to do this is AnyDVD, SmartStripper or DVD Shrink.

Using the SW approach or modifying a DVD player may be a breach of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, so make sure you know more about this before trying anything.

See the source info for more details.

Answer 2

DVD's have macrovision encoding to prevent copying. You will have to strip the macrovision encoding in order to copy.