Copy Protection
Both users and manufacturers display an avid interest in the topic of copy protection. The manufacturers have constantly emphasized the need to copy protect videos to the film industry. Users on the other hand, are constantly trying to crack the protection mechanisms. In this report, we don't intend to supply help for those trying to make illegal copies. Instead, we only intend to examine the products for their conformity. Before we show you the results, let use briefly point out the legal and technical aspects. According to copyright legislation, it is forbidden to copy and distribute protected material, i.e. to sell it. There is an exception for home users. A backup copy is permitted for private use, as long as this is not made available to third parties. For example, you are permitted to make a copy of your favorite CD onto cassette. The practical aspect is however somewhat different for videos. The film industry has applied a copy protection to VHS videos and DVDs right from the start.
You'll be familiar with this system from good old VHS videos. If you try to make a copy from one tape to the next, you'll only get garbage when using copy-protected films. The same effect can be seen when copying from a DVD player onto a VHS video recorder. Let's move on to the test products. We want to find out, whether copy protected material can be saved onto hard disk. To do this, we insert a corresponding film into the DVD player and try to record individual sequences using our All-in-One multitalented boards.
