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I'm trying to figure out just how much value the studios and h/w manufacturers place on keeping the decoded digital datastream inside the box, and having the usual S-video, component, or composite video output interfaces on the outside.With audio, anyone with a high-quality ADC could take output from the SACD or DVD-A players and still get a good rendering. However, I don't know that this is possible with video outputs. Would someone trying to digitize the video outputs be able to re-construct a [digital] file that is worth anyone's time watching? Or would such a practice relegate the pirated copy to low-quality status (still probably more than good enough for people who apparently enjoy watching bootlegged video made from clandestine hand-held cameras inside theaters...) I asked Dan Wright (who does mods for DVD players, and I'm very happy with mine, btw) and he said he thinks it would be very difficult to 'ADC' the standard video outputs, but that he also didn't know for sure.
Anyone who knows the technical ins and outs want to comment?
Thanks --
Mike
The answer is yes. I am not a pirate, but I have an older prosumer video capture card that I purchased several years ago in the $500 range, and it is not affected by copy protection schemes coming out of the analog outputs from either a VHS or DVD player. Digitizing a DVD through AD conversion keeps the video quality intact much as it would keep the audio quality intact. However, there is little point to doing things in this old fashioned method. A common $50 DVD computer drive can flawlessly copy an entire DVD to a hard drive in 15 minutes, and be played off the hard drive just as if the actual DVD disc was being played, menus and all.
Yes, such ADCs exist. And as in audio, quality varies. If a bootlegger were to want to copy DVD material, they usually don't use an ADC though. In that case, they normally rip the bits to the hard disc and re-encode for whatever the target format is. Video ADCs range from USB cables with poor resolution and bitrate, to PCI cards with anything from fair to good quality, to firewire boxes with DVD resolution and very high bitrates. There will always be quality loss, but done well it is quite acceptable to almost unnoticable.
I have a < $2000 used SDI-based capture system (for transferring LDs and VHS to DVD). In general, the DVD player (and compression) itself would be the biggest performance-limiting factor. New, my equipment probably cost in the $5000 to $7000 range.I have yet to try to capture macrovision-protected content, but I'll try it & post the results.
the other person I talked to also said that it's usually a "ripping" job, done from the DVD-ROM drive, but wasn't sure about taking the video output and doing an A/D.I imagine the necessary equipment to do it [pirate from the video outs] at a "high" quality level is fairly pricey right now... but coming down as everything is.
Mike
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