I live in Australia and I noticed the following:

I have a Pioneer DVD, Philips VCR and RCA VCR all hooked up to an amp. In addition, the DVD goes directly into the Philips VCR also. Now comes the interesting bit: When I play a zone-1 DVD, and watch the picture through the Philips VCR, the picture on the Philips VCR is perfect, no fading, no nothing. However, watching the picture through the RCA VCR, all the macrovision stuff kicks in.
Since Philips VCR's picture is fine, I decided to record it on tape. The playback on the Philips is also good. Take the tape and play it back on the RCA, the picture is bad. I've given the tape to a friend to play on his Sharp VCR, and the picture is good too!

Only thing I can think of is that all the machines except the RCA are non-US brand/designed, so maybe they don't cater for the macrovision 'thingy'. Whereas the RCA VCR is a US-brand machine, and all features and functions seems to be geared for a US market - except to fit in a PAL tuner and 240V power supply and export to Australia, so all that macrovision stuff were built into the VCR.

Any ideas?