Red Copy Option Missing !

TaylorMUK

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Something's changed in the last week or so with Anytime. A week or so ago I 'recorded' The Fog to my planner and then watched the film whilst recording to my Sony DVD Recorder - everything worked fine; the DVD copy (for my own use) is perfect.

The last two days I've tried to record jarhead by following the same process. Press R to get it into the planner; then watch the film whilst setting Record on the DVD recorder then leaving it to run overnight (with the autostandby turned off) whilst I go to bed.

In the morning the recorded DVD just had a full grey screen recorded for two hours. At first I thought I'd done something wrong. After looking I noticed that in the planner when I have Jarhead selected the red copy option disappears. I tried again with the Columbia Seconds From Disaster again it has no red copy option and cannot be recorded.

All 'normal' things in the planner (including films from various Sky Movies) have the copy option and can be recorded successfully. Is this a change of heart by Sky or had they just 'forgotten' to turn protection on ? As I said, just a couple of weeks ago I did exactly the same with 'The Fog' from Anytime and that worked a treat.
 
I took a look in my Sky planner just since you mentioned it as I too copied over The Fog to watch later, I have no copy option for this either. Everything else I have recorded from the EPG does have this though.

Strange problem.
 
I tried to copy the Anytime version of Lost last night. I got a 'Copy protection - Recording prohibited' message from my DVD recorder.
 
Did you get that when directly recording it from anytime planner or when you had copied it (if still possible) over to you own planner and then played it from there?
 
Sorry if I'm being dense here but surely it's just disabled the Copy option because the recording is already in your planner? No?
 
I wondered that but re-reading his original post I believe he is saying

1) Stuff that he copied from Anytime to his planner when he played it and recored the output was blank (looks like copy protection has been enabled recently for anything original anytime sourced)

2) He then tried to use the planner copy option instead after copying them from anytime but found that the stuff copied from anytime into his planner doesn't have the copy option available.
 
OK, I see. Can't you just not use the copy option and just play it and record at the same time? Less convenient but surely that works, otherwise you couldn't watch anything?!
 
Thats what he started with. It doesn't appear to work anymore as the output for anytime sourced content via Scart has macrovision enabled on it so whilst it displays fine on the TV, the DVD recorder just records a grey image or in other cases doesn't record at all and displays a "Protected content" error message just like they do if you try copying a protected DVD from via the scart socket from another dvd player.
 
Thats what he started with. It doesn't appear to work anymore as the output for anytime sourced content via Scart has macrovision enabled on it so whilst it displays fine on the TV, the DVD recorder just records a grey image or in other cases doesn't record at all and displays a "Protected content" error message just like they do if you try copying a protected DVD from via the scart socket from another dvd player.

I have copied from Anytime to DVD and to HDD of my recorder
 
Indeed as did the OP.

This isn't the 1st person to say that something has changed recently and they are now having trouble (i.e. weren't before) recording Anytime content to DVD/HDD now either a) via copying anytime to planner and then to DVD whilst playing it back from planner or b) Playing it straight from anytime and recording it ???

Does suggest to me that Sky are trying to close what they see as loopholes as why would they want you to be able to record DOG/Advert free content to DVD as I certainly wouldn't expect to be able to and was surprised to find it worked. Haven't tried recently so may well be restricted for me now too.
 
I have copied from Anytime to DVD and to HDD of my recorder

Try it again now. I did copy The Fog to DVD a week or so ago. But recently nothing. BTW. I don't use the Copy function I tend to normally view the program and then record via DVD.

Does suggest to me that Sky are trying to close what they see as loopholes as why would they want you to be able to record DOG/Advert free content to DVD as I certainly wouldn't expect to be able to and was surprised to find it worked. Haven't tried recently so may well be restricted for me now too.

I think you're right there. Since my OP I've recorded the Nat Geo Columbia Seconds From Disaster from the normal NatGeo channel. This does have the Copy option and can be recorded (by viewing or by copy). So it appears that it is only Anytime that is blocked.

Thanks for all who replied ...
 
Try it again now. I did copy The Fog to DVD a week or so ago. But recently nothing. BTW. I don't use the Copy function I tend to normally view the program and then record via DVD.

Just tried again and copied every thing that was there, all be it not anything good. Copied to HDD
 
The Fog? Has that been on anytime? Not on mine it hasn't.
 
whats the last update you had on anytime
 
Just tried again and copied every thing that was there, all be it not anything good. Copied to HDD

Can you burn whatever it was to a DVD ? (Assuming that there's something worth wasting a blank on.) Not sure of the Macrovision intricacies here but does macrovision kick in when you copy to HDD ? I thought it was encoded in part of the video signal and it was the AGC in the recording circuitry that effectively blocked the recording. By copying to the HDD of your DVD recorder has the Macrovision been 'interpreted' yet ?

The appearance (or not) of the Red Copy Option on an item in the planner seems to equate directly to the ability or not to record to a DVD even when the program is just viewed and the DVD recorder takes the playing program feed - in my case there is no warning just the finished DVD is simply a completely grey image.
 
Can you burn whatever it was to a DVD ? (Assuming that there's something worth wasting a blank on.) Not sure of the Macrovision intricacies here but does macrovision kick in when you copy to HDD ? I thought it was encoded in part of the video signal and it was the AGC in the recording circuitry that effectively blocked the recording. By copying to the HDD of your DVD recorder has the Macrovision been 'interpreted' yet ?

The appearance (or not) of the Red Copy Option on an item in the planner seems to equate directly to the ability or not to record to a DVD even when the program is just viewed and the DVD recorder takes the playing program feed - in my case there is no warning just the finished DVD is simply a completely grey image.


I did when Anytime was first launched but only did as a tests like wise only recoreded to the HDD as test, there has been no macrovision kicking in at all. I will do a more in-depth test tomorrow to see if there are any issues with recording and report back, in the mean time back to the footie
 
I did when Anytime was first launched but only did as a tests like wise only recoreded to the HDD as test, there has been no macrovision kicking in at all. I will do a more in-depth test tomorrow to see if there are any issues with recording and report back, in the mean time back to the footie

Recorded from planner parts of onto HDD then onto DVD today,

Paul Anka
Seconds from Disater
On the Waterfront
Jarhead
Transamerica
Memoirs of a Geisha and Kingdom of Haven

All without any problems
 
All without any problems

Amazing :thumbsup: My Sony DVD Recorder will not record any of these ! Maybe your HDD recorder is ignoring Macrovision or maybe its just me; but every time the red copy is not active all I get is a grey blank recording.

If I continue recording and go back to the planner with the Sky Remote and then go back to live TV. When I play back the DVD I get steady grey followed by the planner and then whatever the live TV was - the Anytime program was just blocked :( .

What model HDD DVD do you have ?

When in your planner is the Red Button active. ie does it display the copy option at the bottom left for these programs ?

What more can I say ?
 
Amazing :thumbsup: My Sony DVD Recorder will not record any of these ! Maybe your HDD recorder is ignoring Macrovision or maybe its just me; but every time the red copy is not active all I get is a grey blank recording.

If I continue recording and go back to the planner with the Sky Remote and then go back to live TV. When I play back the DVD I get steady grey followed by the planner and then whatever the live TV was - the Anytime program was just blocked :( .

What model HDD DVD do you have ?

When in your planner is the Red Button active. ie does it display the copy option at the bottom left for these programs ?

What more can I say ?

My recorder is an LG, I recored from anytime when playing I just press recored to HDD not done it striate to DVD, when programs are sent to the planner there is no red copy button but again I just press play on the sky remote and recored on my LG
 
OK done a bit of testing today and it seems some anytime content is protected and some isn't

i set my dvd recorder recoding the anytime maenu and the selected various programs.

inside man available till Thu 26th is fine to record as it plays out from Anytime. However Lost available till 29th as soon as you play it on anytime my philips dvd75r puts up copy prot on the front panel and pauses recording. exit lost and back into the anytime menu and recording starts again so just to be sure select inside man again and yep still contiunes recording. played back the recording and its has two bits of inside man on it with a it of anytime menu inbetween and no lost so matches what it told me.

in both cases selecting record to move these to my planner resulted in both not having the red copy option so neither could be queued up for overnight copying.

hth
 
As long as the content is not HD then I can copy anything. Are you sure that's not your problem? Thats the only time the copy button goes here.
 
On Anytime
Lost was SkyoneHD and triggered copy protection
Inside man was Sky Movies HD1 and didn't have copy protection

So yes both were HD and didn't give the copy option once recorded to my own planner (scrollng up and down list of recordings in my planner caused the red copy button to appear/disappear depending on if it was anytime content originally) Doesn't explain the difference in copy protection when just played directly from Anytime menu and attempting to record the output being sent to the DVD recorder?
 
What happens to the aspect ratios? That problem is discussed below. Sky are really beginning to irritate me with what they're doing with the copy function.
 

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