I have finally finished recording all my Prince stuff from VCR tapes over the years onto DVDs from television appearances that I had recorded when they were broadcasted to VHS tapes such as "Prince and the Revolution Live" and "3 Chains O Gold" which haven't been released on DVD.

Anyway, when I got ready to record the "Sign O The Times" concert film, the DVD recorder immediately showed the "copy protected" message and would not record. I've recorded several VHS tapes onto DVDs with no problem but they were all released from Warner Brothers. I did notice that "Sign O The Times" had the MCA logo at the beginning of the tape. What the hell was up with that? Why would MCA have released that film? The strange thing is, my VHS copy is a copy of the original VHS when I rented the tape back in the 1980s. I was able to copy it on VHS but not DVD. Damn new technology!
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[Edited 4/9/08 13:44pm]

Uh-oh, the only one I have oo Sign of the time is VHS too, and I wanted to transfer it to DVD, I'd better go look at mine now!
[Edited 4/9/08 15:03pm]

I tried everything. I even fast forwarded the tape just to see if I could record any of the tape. Same message every time. It's got something to do with MCA because I can record anything from Warner Brothers.

That is not good news.

I've still never seen that movie all the way through...just 20 minutes or so in the center...at a neighbors 2 years ago...

vainandy said:

Well then maybe you folks should buy the SOTT DVD.

an officially released, well mastered copy in 5.1 digital.

http://www.amazon.ca/Prin...326&sr=8-5

12 bucks canadian.

Warner Bros did not release the Sign O The Times concert film. The only rights to the motion picture any division of Warner can lay claim to is the song publishing. An independent distribution agreement was put in place with Cineplex-Odeon, which sent the film in to theaters and another distribution agreement was put in place with MCA Home Video for the VHS release. Unfortunately, at the time, different home video companies had different standards for the protection of their VHS releases. MCA probably used copy protection where Warner Bros Home Video did not.

there used to be devices you could buy at places like Radio Shack that would remove copy protection from vhs tapes when dubbing. Unfortunately, you'll probably have an even harder time finding one of these than you would just simply buying the dvd.

It's temporarily out of stock at Amazon. Believe me, if it was available in the local stores, I would have no problem buying it. I already bought "Purple Rain", "Under The Cherry Moon", "Graffiti Bridge", "Live At The Aladin", "Rave Un2 The Year 2000", "The Diamonds and Pearls Collection", and "The Hits Collection". I think I read somewhere that it was only released in other countries which makes no sense because this is America.....the place where Prince is from.

Thanks for the info. I was wondering why MCA was even involved.




Warner Brothers still doesn't. I've made copies of the music videos that are on Prince's movie DVDs for friends with no problem whatsoever.

vainandy said:

Well, Cineplex Odeon, the distributor of SOTT was a Canadian company, so it kind of makes sense.

In either case, you should really try and dig this up, it is a very good release, as far as Prince DVDs are concerned. D&P was just a tape transfer, complete with subpar sound. It actually looks like some level of care was put into this release.