I have a DVD rom drive on my computer that I use to watch DVD movies. I connect the computer to my TV via my video (I have no connectors on my TV except an earphone socket)
However, I cannot watch some DVD movies on the TV because I think it has something to do with the copy protect on the actual DVD disc?

"The Thomas Crown Affair" DVD played O.K. but with "A Perfect Murder" the picture kept changing from light to dark every few seconds, and "Farscape" I could not watch at all.

Does anybody else have any other explanation?

That'll be Macrovision. You will need to wire your PC to your TV differently (ie. not through your VCR) and if that doesn't work you will need to buy a Macrovision Blitter from somewehere like Exchange and Mart - or wherever.

Or better still you could buy a new TV. I'm not trying to be patronising but if your TV only has an rf and an earphone socket it mustn't be that good. Once you have a decent TV with scart of s-video you're laughing!

Thanks for the replys!

I do have a large screen TV with a scart socket down stairs, but the computer is located upstairs, so without taking the computer to the TV, I have to use another TV that unfortunatly does not have any sockets.

But how does a DVD with copy protection "know" it is connected to TV via a video recorder? The signal is only be past through the VCR and not being recorded.

Also, the "A Perfect Murder" DVD had no indication that it had copy protection unlike "Farscape."

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Steed:
But how does a DVD with copy protection "know" it is connected to TV via a video recorder? The signal is only be past through the VCR and not being recorded.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's not that smart

The Macrovision signal is designed to disrupt most VCR's but not televisions. Some VCR's aren't affected but these are hard to find.

Check out www.7thzone.com here you can download dvd genie for the pc, this enables you to change region settings so ya can buy USA region 1 discs, and also disable macrovision. Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the replys.
Much appreciated.

I find it incredibly hard to believe how incredibly easy it is these days to play DVD movies and also Blu-Ray movies directly through a computer without even needing to use paid for software, plus a TV is not even necessarily required!

VLC Media Player can easily play DVD movies, and with some free plugins installed, even Blu-Ray movies!

When I was at school, and a teacher played a DVD on their laptop as part of a lesson, I noticed that Cyberlink Power DVD was being used, and I always meant to tell the system administrator that a lot of money could have been saved if the school had never bothered with Cyberlink Power DVD, and instead used VLC Media Player for DVD playback!

What confuses me however, is how Microsoft removed DVD playback support from Windows 8, citing codec licensing costs, whereas it still seems easily viable via an open source project like VLC Media Player!