The Macrovision chip, found in all DVD players sold throughout the world, is a form of copy protection enforced by both the manufacturers and the Hollywood studios. Hollywood of course wants to protect its software from piracy and thus prevent the end user from making copies from a digital source i.e. DVD. Thus the end user finds that when a DVD player is coupled to a video recorder the resulting picture is degraded by a pulsing of the brightness making it virtually unviewable.

Defeating the Macrovision on a DVD player will allow copies of a DVD onto VHS tape, but would you really want to go from 500 lines of resolution to 220 lines and listen to mono audio rather than dolby digital?

Macrovision will not affect the picture quality on overhead/rear screen projectors bought over the last few years, as some companies' may have you believe.

Please note that making copies of DVDs onto tape, or any other media, whether archival or not, is prohibited in the United Kingdom and is punishable both by fines and imprisonment.