Region 1 DVD 'picture problems'

[donniedarko]

On some R1 DVDs I play on my multi-region player, I get dark horizontal 'bands' on the picture. Funny thing is, it depends on the scene in the film. eg. 2 people in a scene. When the camera is on 1 the band is there, disappears when onthe other person, but re-appears when it goes back to the first person. Hopefully someone will understand, as it's difficult to explain. I figured it was something to do maybe with bitrate processing.

[ItsIllak]

Just a guess, but this could be being caused by macrovision. Make sure that your TV is connected directly to your DVD player, and not through the VCR. If this doesn't solve it, it could be a problem with the actual player. Macrovision is a copy protection system that tries to screw up a picture so that it can't be copied. It causes "banding", but usually in pretty much random ways rather than scene related).