Direct TV to VCR to TV problem

[MrWizzard]

Trying to fix a problem my Grandma is having.

She?s old and not very willing to adapt to new technology. She wants to use a VCR so a digital video recorder is out of the question.

When recording any show the TV signal (what we see on the TV) is fine. But what was recorded onto the tape is a mess. It goes black and white then with lines through it, then over about 10 seconds it clears up to be almost completely clear then the cycle starts over again. I am trying to figure out why it would record like this.....

I know the VCR works fine because it plays back shows recoded a while ago fine, also commercial movies play fine.

Things I have tried,

1. Swapping out VCRs
2. Swapping out cables, Coax, RCA S-Video
3. Swapping out tapes she records on.

Not sure what it could be, can it be some type of scrambling signal that Direct TV started using, do we have to have their digital recorder now?

Any help would be great. Thanks

 

[newnameman]

Sounds like Macrovision?

 

[nsafreak]

I did some searching around and confirmed that it's Macrovision. It seems that it's something that DirecTV has been planning on implementing for a while and just implemented recently. If she wants to continue to use a VCR to record you're going to have to find one of those devices that will strip the macrovision protection out of the audio & video.