Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Eluding Macrovision

I suppose I should be grateful to my dad for giving me an old TV since I wouldn't be able to have one at all otherwise, being a poor college student and all. But, he gave me a Symphonic with integrated VCR. It has only two inputs (and ZERO outputs, mind you) -- composite video and TV (RF).

So, when I plug the composite video output of my girlfriend's cheapo Apex DVD player into the composite input on the TV (either directly or via my Denon AVR-884), I get the unbearable Macrovision continuous fade-in and fade-out because the input is technically on a VCR. Why anyone would manufacture a television incapable of being used in a straighforward manner in conjunction with a DVD player is beyond me.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on eluding Macrovision. I've thought of playing DVDs on my iMac and getting a VGA-to-NTSC converter, but those things cost twice as much as my girlfriend's DVD player and I'd really much rather save money to buy a better TV (and a subwoofer, better DVD player, surrounds, center channel, etc.).

Is there any way to use the TV (RF) input instead? Or perhaps some cheap doohickey that strips out Macrovision? I'm at a loss here, and I'd really like to be able to watch DVDs without getting a headache.

UPDATE: I've just discovered that, supposedly, some DVD players allow you to disable Macrovision. If anyone knows of any Universal DVD/CD players which do this, I'd love to hear about it as I might be able to just go that route.

I've also come across the supposed existence of Macrovision "stabilizers" which remove Macrovision from the video signal, but these, too, seem to cost a lot of money I'm not willing to spend for a short-term fix.