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Show via Engineers Inventing Ways to Zap VCR Recording By Daniel y. Hanev Associated Press Writer CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Commercial zappers and time shifters of the world, take note; Engineers are inventing ways to broadcast television shows so that video cassette record- ers cannot tape them. This quest is still in the tinkering and talking stage. But if the technology succeeds and if it is used (the second "if" is especially big), it could d freecrimp Americans dom to watch what they want when they want. So far. the television and movie producers have financed at least three projects to accomplish this. "We're serious about it, says Allen Cooper, vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. We need to protect our copyright. Without our copyright, we own nothing. If a system is developed that works and we can implement. I think it would be broadly used." The goal is to find a way to send programs over cable or the air so that people can see them on television but can't record them. It's called, naturally enough, unrecordable vid-enew-foun- Unrecordable Video "Unrecordable video refers to generating a television signal that you can w atch on a standard TV set without any scramblers or gizmos or boxes. but it blows a tape recorder out of the water," says Andrew Lippman of Massachusetts Institute of Technol- are shown with commercials. And anybody whos recorded a movie for free isnt going to pay $00 for a prerecorded cassette. One answer to this though peris Lippmans haps not the final one invention. Alter the Timing "The idea is that we alter the timing of the television signal," he says. "TV runs at 30 frames a second. When you watch TV, youre really watching still images. "Weve devised a modification of the TV signal so that it doesn't any longer run at 30 frames a second. It runs slight!'' slower and occasionally ,er. Basically, in doing so slight were exploiting resiliency. "The job of a TV set is to do the best it can in making a picture of whatever junk you feed into its antenna. VCRs are not quite as good as that. One reason is that they are mechanical instead of electrical, and because of its mechanical nature, the tape recorder is fundamentally not as resilient as an electronic device like a television set. In other words, a TV works fine when the signal speeds up and slows down. It can cope with a sloppy sig nal. But a VCR cannot. It needs a steady 30 frames per second. Tinker with the signal just a little. Lippman says, and the VCR records the show in black and white, not color. A bit more, and the picture seems to breathe; it grows and shrinks on the screen. After that, the picture turns to snow. "If the color goes away, thats probably sufficient," says Lippman. "You dont have to do much to a movie to make it unwatchable or at least not pleasantly watchable -when you can rent a cassette for a dollar." The single most important requirement is that the scrambling thwart only VCRs, not TVs. Lippman says he still needs to test his system on all the brands of televisions now sold to make sure that theyll receive his fluctuating signal. This might not knock every VCR into oblivion. Lippman says hes having trouble with the most expensive and sophisticated models. But hes sure he can wreck the performance of well over half of them. Fluctuating Signals Lippman says it would be possible to construct a box that would convert the TV signal into something the VCRs can use. But those boxes would be expensive. Certainly the tape recorder makers will begin building machines that can cope with fluctuating signals. This could lead, he says, to a kind of video arms race. If there Is one way to ruin VCR performance, there are probably many. People might be reluctant to buy the next generation of recorder because they wont know what tricks the video saboteurs still have up their sleeves. Another possible problem would be getting this system past federal regulators. Since it would require a change in broadcast standards, it would have to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. Because TVs would still work, Lippman says he cant imagine why the FCC would object. But the program makers arent so confident. So the Motion Picture Association has underwritten two projects to find ways to undermine VCRs that would not need the FCCs blessing. Cooper says that neither worked very well. They could disrupt VCRs. But they also bushwacked some TVs in the process. Associated pt ess Photo Andrew Lippman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology generates TV signal to blow recorders out of the water. r Vista Optical knows the kind of eyewear youre looking for! The highest quality at the lowest prices. 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"To the extent that zapping goes on and the proportion of VCR owners grows, the value of television as an advertising medium deteriorates substantially." Cooper says. "The funds for the development of programs for television will also go down the drain." That's one reason why the program makers are intrigued with the idea of unrecordable video. Another is the prospect of thwarting people who off pay copy movies illegally cable channels and watch them over and over. Producers make money by recycling movies. When they finish their run in theaters, the cable movie channels pay to show them. But if lots of people record them off the cable for their home libraries, the value of the films goes down. They are worth less money to the networks, because fewer people will watch them when they '3 - I Big Savings! "051 1 1 MOOT COWrXfrfCft FOH AU.VOU mDSlfl 1 A.M. to 7 P.M. 1 A.M. to 7 PM. 1 A.M. to 7 P.M. a O CQUTMIS! 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