Previously I wrote an article on disabling the Macrovision protection on my Philips DVDR-3570H recorder. Unfortunately, while I was one of the first that came into the test mode of the device, and I switched the Macrovision off, but it did not seem to work.

After much searching I found out that it only works for playback and not for recording. Plus there is no way to my knowledge to play discs in the test mode to verify if the Macrovision protection is really off. So I don’t know what this function in the test mode does. It is documented, but not what and how it works.

SIMA / Grex alternatives

So I decided to buy an external Macrovision decryptor. A lot are on the market, but in some countries restricted and pricy. So I had to save some money and wait for the right device to come by. I saw the Grex devices, only they are sold from the US. As I did not want to take the risk of customs rejection nor wanted to pay the import taxes and shipping costs I had to look for a European device which works on PAL-B. So there were a few options. The SIMA devices and those kind of devices were 100+ euro’s and that was not the money I wanted to spend.

ELCE Macrovision 2000

So I found the ELCE Macrovision 2000, which was not only extremely scarce, but also thoroughly developed. It supports Scart IN and 2 scarts out and has support for Macrovision level 4.

Blu-ray

It also works on Blu-ray discs, but not all of them. On some blu-rays the red colors turned orange when I switched the device on, on others it seemd to work better. 

On DVD’s it works perfectly. Switch the device on and it removes the Philips do not copy message.

Strange thing is that even when you remove the protection with the device switched on, and then switch the device off, the Philips recorder still records, but those recordings cannot be played back. On DVD’s, color is not affected and recordings are perfectly copied onto the Philips recorder harddisk. The only downside is that you have quite thick SCART kabels running from the back of the recorder into the device and then a cable running towards the playback player.

But it works very well. If you can find one, I highly recommend it.