Steve Hicks Online

Unfortunately, it’s time for a moan … so I apologise in advance. The source of my moan? None other than Sony … one of the largest corporations on earth. And what have they done? They’ve gone copy protection mad, and prevented thousands of users watching DVDs and listening to CDs that have been purchased legally.

Let me explain. I have recently purchased two DVDs produced by Sony, The Pursuit of Happyness (Widescreen Edition), and The Longest Yard (Widescreen Edition), only to get home and try playing them on my PC to find the picture completely scrambled and unwatchable. A bad batch of DVDs from Sony … or so I thought.

So, the next day, back to the store I go to get replacements. Again, I get home to try playing them in my PC to find the exact same result. It was then that I started to think along the lines of faulty hardware, so began searching the internet for updated drivers and firmware for all my hardware …. motherboard, DVD drives, the lot. Still no luck. I was beginning to tear my hair out.

It was then that I decided to search Google to see if anyone else had experienced similar problems. In hindsight it probably would have been a sensible plan to do this before expending all that time and energy updating my machine … as there were literally hundreds of similar complaints.

Do you know what the problem was/is …. Sony’s copy protection algorithm ArcCos. Yes, Sony have developed the ultimate in copy protection systems … afterall, who wants to copy something that they can’t watch anyway?

Anyway … further searching on Google revealed that Sony’s system was not as secure as they’d hoped, and there was a pretty basic workaround and I would in fact be able to watch my new purchases. Slysoft AnyDVD is a program that you can install on your PC to bypass copy protection on DVDs, including Sony’s ArcCos algorithm. Lo-and-behold, as soon as I’d managed to install the program, and try playing the first of the DVDs, playback was picture perfect.