The Washington Post, February 27, 1987

 

Tom Shales

 

In Hollywood, crybaby movie studios who twirled themselves into litigious fits trying to thwart the rise of home video now make fortunes from films that otherwise go belly-up at the box office. But they are still not content. They keep adding new technical tricks that are allegedly designed to prevent piracy of videotapes but which have the effect of making it increasingly difficult to find a tape that can be played on a home video set-up without the picture flipping and flopping and turning into Rorschach mush before your very, and very annoyed, eyes.

 

Latest of these intrusive brainstorms is a fault-ridden signal wrenching process called Macrovision that renders some tapes encoded with it simply and manifestly unplayable No Matter What. You adjust the tracking, you adjust the horizontal hold, you do everything but consult an exorcist and still the image warps.

 

Hollywood claims such measures foil video pirates. Really, video pirates are only interested in duplicating porno films. They are not going to make a load of money duplicating "Out of Africa," one of the Macrovisioned titles that caused innumerable problems for video customers and store proprietors. All movie industry claims of alleged financial damage caused by piracy are purely speculative alarmism. They should stop spending money on goofball anti-piracy gimmicks that punish and frustrate honest, hard-working, apple-pie-and-mom-loving consumers.