Quote:
Originally Posted by CyGuy
So, when I purchase a DVD player, I have in fact purchased a license to play the DVD by descrambling the contents on the media. If I output my DVD player to my VCR and hit “record”, I am not circumventing CSS, correct?
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This is a bit complex under US law, so I will explain. The DVD player, under the legal functions allowed in the US, does not produce a recordable signal on the analog outputs (or digital ones for that matter). The analog out is Macrovision encoded. Removal of the Macrovision encoding, falls under the DCMA rules. Now, many players are sold in world-wide markets with different laws and different consumer demands. So there is often a hidden control menu allowing things like region code, Macrovision encoding flag, PAL/NTSC/SECAM output to be varied from lot to lot depending on the market being shipped to. Such models used to be in demand as "hackable" machines, mainly to remove region code restriction. This is illegal, but the odds of being prosecuted are nil. (A test case of region restriction versus the US constitutional rights to freedom of speech would make an interesting case law, and the MPAA has made certain that they are involved in no such cases
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If you reset your DVD player, assuming it is capable of being reset, to remove your Macrovision flag, then you could record from your analog outlets. Of course, if you want a digital copy of the recording, you would have to re-encode the analog signal, causing a gen loss in the resulting copy. It would be digital thereafter.
HD signals use HDMI by US law, which remains encrypted through out the signal path until the final decryption inside the television itself. There is an analog hole possible there, which is also illegal, but I'm tired of discussing a noxious subject....