Fluctuating gamma on TV connected via S-video adapter

I have a television (generic CRT) connected to my Powerbook G4 through the S-video adapter and an RCA cable.
Periodically (and I think with increasing frequency), it looks like the gamma setting for the TV fluctuates when it is displaying the line in from the Powerbook. It gets darker and darker... and then it gets lighter and lighter... and then it gets darker and darker... etc. It's a slow cycle, but I haven't been able to find any way of breaking it (restarting the computer, reconnecting the cables, re-detecting the displays, turning mirroring on and off) and it appears to happen whether the display is mirrored or part of a multiple display arrangement.
The one correlation I might have seen is between the temperature of the computer and the fluctuation: hotter -> fluctuation is more likely (no faster or more extreme, just more likely to happen). I think. Of course, the Powerbook spends so much time raging hot that it's hard to tell if this is coincidence or actually meaningful.
Has anyone else experienced this or something like it? Since it's sporadic, I have to hope that there is a fix ("always reboot before connecting the TV" would be a fine fix... if it worked), rather than marking it down as dying hardware.
Thanks for any help folks can offer!

It was indeed Macrovision copy protection. And, if anyone happens to pull this up on a similar search, it's worth noting that not all video players bother to transmit the Macrovision "protection" signal (this occurred to me as a I read this. With DVDs, 'tain't the hardware -- it's in the software!)
Try something more flexible than Apple's DVD Player: VLC.
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Fluctuating gamma on TV connected via S-video adapter

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