How To Copy VHS Movie Tapes When You Can't in 1986

using our time machine we are going to travel back to the year 1985 now today videos are available at every corner drugstore literally Walgreens right but back in 1985 movies were a little bit harder to come by let me explain you didn't have the internet you didn't have a computer you didn't have an iPhone you didn't have any way of getting to a movie other than looking through the looking-glass of a VHS VCR or cable or satellite or something that would come on TV at a specific time that you had to plan for so if you wanted a movie you had to go rent it right if you wanted to rent a movie back then it would cost you about five bucks a night at your local Blockbuster store but what if you wanted to buy it what if you wanted to own it I want to own a movie like this one I want to own back to the future how much did that movie cost in 1985 or 86 when it was released it would cost you between 70 and 80 dollars that's a hundred and fifty four dollars and 25 cents and 2016 money you had already paid $500 for the VCR back in the back there five hundred dollars which is worth eleven hundred dollars and twenty sixteen money so the machine to take you on on your journey through the movies was a big investment the movies to watch on it or a big investment now you can go to a thrift store and get these five for a buck right five for fifty cents if they're having a sale 70 to 80 dollars was the title costs back then but most people didn't buy them they rented them because not everybody had the money to just go out and buy them when I was doing a little research before I started this video there was a guy who worked in a video store in 1989 he remembers when platoon blind-date and the movie mannequin were each released his price at his store $90 each and he they sold a ton so what do you do back in 1986 if you wanted a copy of this movie and you didn't want to have to spend $80 for it or $70 for it well the cheapest route to go would be through something like this a blank VHS tape and depending on the grade of the Veit of the VHS tape you might pay four to ten dollars for that now that's a whole lot less than $80 or $70 for this movie now if you did decide to buy this release you were going to get the utmost of quality Scotch exg hi-fi grade tape and HiFi stereo sound so that was a pretty big deal back then being able to watch a movie in stereo at home and a lot of people didn't have the equipment not is just about every TV has at least two speakers in it so again you wanted to go cheap well here's what you do my friend Johnny across the street his family has a VCR my family has a VCR so let's just hook them together and we'll make a copy right just make a copy of this movie onto this tape you think that would be simple and easy to do except Hollywood had a little a little catch there for you deep within the chasms of this videotape that you see here was a little copy protection scheme known as macro vision and macro vision was there to prevent you from copying Hollywood's greatest hits what did it do well it didn't actually prevent you I mean there was no policeman that showed up to your house and prevented you from doing the copying you could do the copying the problem was once you made the copy it would either look really degraded it would go really bright and then really dark most of the time it was just dark and fuzzy the picture or the sound quality was sine didn't affect the sound quality but the picture would just go all too crazy does in fact let me show you just how bad it looked okay so again here is my playback of my recording now right there that doesn't look too bad right now watch it go dark there it goes it's getting dark it's getting fuzzy not very fun to watch so imagine if you had a way to get rid of this copy protection scheme what would that look like look around his head all those jagged edges well wait for it here it comes and like magic here it comes boom this is what your recording would look like with your macro vision removed so how did you obtain this magic what did it take to make your picture your recording quality look this good well I'm about to show you Hollywood you're about to meet your match this is the RX to digital video stabilizer and with the RX 2 video stabilizer I can eliminate all video copy guards that's right it's simple no tools are required you just simply connect this in between your two VCRs and it completely eliminates all copyright and all picture you know distortions right so how much did this guy cost well this would run you about the cost of a brand new movie we've run you about $50 fact a little bit under right $50 much cheaper than going out and buying back to the future I can just buy this box and copy every video that I possibly could want so how does this work well let's open it up and see well before we do that here let's look at the box digital video stabilizer rx 2 eliminates all video copy guards while playing back rental movies you will notice annoying periodic Kupfer darkening color shift unwanted lines flashing or jagged edges this is caused by the copy-protection jamming signals embedded into the video tape such as macrovision copy-protection digital video stabilizer rx 2 completely eliminates all copy protections and jamming signals and brings you cliffs crystal-clear pictures it's easy to use and a snap to install state of the art integrated color technology 100% automatic no need for troublesome adjustments compatible with all types of VCRs and TVs the best and most exciting video stabilizer on the market actually it's the only one I ever heard of lightweight eight ounces and very compact and uses a standard nine volt battery which will last one to two years now we tell you all that to tell you this warning the manufacturer does not encourage people to use this video stabilizer to duplicate rental movies or copyrighted videotapes rx2 is intended to stabilize and restore because the clear picture quality for private home use only alright just glad we got that out of the way alright here's what she looks like just a little box right I mean somebody could've made this in their basement you would think there was nothing else to it right oh wait there's a label on the outside and again there's that warning don't use it to copy videos even though that's exactly what this will do it'll help you copy videos so let's open it up and see what it looks like on the inside here here give me a second here to pop this hood on this thing it's kind of tough alright so inside this beauty is a circuit board right there so you have your composite video in and composite video out and it's running across all these amazing circuits they're there to eliminate the demon of copyright protection and it works off a 9-volt battery and it really works that video I showed you earlier when the video changed and got pretty it was because I was running it through my digital video stabilizer so how do you hook it up very simple it's just like they said very simple the audio just runs straight from one VCR to the other so over here you'll see that I've got my my Sony VCR and my JBC my signal the audio goes straight from the audio out of the bottom VCR to the audio in on the top VCR and then over here I have two different video cables here's the one that goes in to the VCR here okay I connect that to my output there on the bottom and then my video signal coming from the Sony VCR goes into the input right there and I'm ready to copy all the movies I want I'm so excited and all it cost me was fifty dollars okay saving a ton here right so let's see the difference of what it looks like live alright so here we are watching the video through the video stabilizer see you can see right here that the video stabilizer is still connected picture looks nice and sharp clear as can be now I'm going to take the video stabilizer out of the picture and I'm going to run it directly run my signal directly into the VCR and we'll see how it looks there now see it looks kind of normal right doesn't look too bad at all now let's record that signal go ahead and throw in my blank tape and I'm going to hit record all right so now we're recording and now notice what has happened everyone's faces have turned bright orange ish reddish things don't look good because the recording circuit has been engaged and now we're monitoring the recording so let's go ahead and throw the signal cleanup into the mix okay see how ugly everything looks so unplug this plug it into our signal fixer and voila everything looks bright it looks normal and now I can make some high-quality recordings now you'll notice that there's these little waves of circles going across the image that has nothing to do with macro vision that's this television messing with my my camera so occasionally you might see that the wave of circular design going across there there it goes okay that's not macro vision or anything else in between that is simply just a phenomenon all right let's go back and see what our macro vision signal looks like again unplug that plug this in and there we are now sometimes it looks okay whoops hang on oh yeah I had to make sure I had it hooked up correctly and there goes the picture getting dark and everybody's faces getting orange there's our macro vision at work there and it wasn't just this movie it was all Hollywood movies or 99% of them that was using this particular copyright protection and let's override it and there we are there's our picture using the video stabilizer so the product worked I actually have a story to tell about this I had a friend who had one of these this in fact he had this exact Ochs and i paid a little bit less than my friend paid for it back in the mid 90s I paid $5.00 for it fact I think it was 30% off at that particular thrift store but yeah I paid a little bit less so anyway here has been your history lesson taking you back in time to the 1980s when we couldn't get movies for free everywhere or from Red Box we had to watch them on tapes so I hope you enjoyed this demonstration I hope you've learned your lesson never to copy a movie without having the macro eliminator in there the digital video stabilizer rx - thank you for watching please share with a friend and go out and buy a copy of Back to the Future on blu-ray because it's going to be the best way you've ever seen it and please click that little like button and share with a friend thanks for watching

Channel: databits

Views: 131,985

Keywords: VCR, databits, minidisc, VHS, vinyl, turntables, reviews, electronics, history, laserdisc, compact disc, cassette, 8-Track

Id: TdxQ6ioKyzs

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2016