Is Macrovision in video cards something new?

I was looking at an advertisement for a NVidia based video card, "MSI MS-8911 FX5200-TD128 DDR 128MB 8X AGP Video Card",

http://www.accupc.com/itemDetail.jsp?pid=vmsfx5200td128&refer=PriceGrabber

It looks pretty decent to me for under 70 bucks, but I did notice in the advert they point out one "feature" it has is "Integrated NTSC/PAL TV encoder support resolutions up to 1024x768 without the need for panning with built-in Macrovision copy protection. Isn't that something that prevents capturing or copying video? I would have to say that I am sceptical about the usefulness of TV encoder support that may or may not allow you to capture the signal. Is this something all cards have? Does it cause problems with video quality, ect...

as an aside, just speaking for myself, i found that Macrovision that was (is?) used on video tapes had such a deleterious effect on the picture quality that I stopped watching video cassettes entirely.

Anyway, what do you think? is this a decent card for watching dvd's and perhaps doing some DV editing and analog to digital editing? Is the Macrovision thing going to ruin an otherwise good video card? Is Macrovision in all video cards?

- HandsOff

 

you might like to look at the link here to compare video cards.