Playability of a copy protected video signal is improved by reducing the darkening and or venetian blind effects which tend to cause artifacts in a video signal display. To this end, the copy protection signal includes automatic gain control (AGC) signals or pulses in video lines in a portion of the active or viewable video field or frame, wherein the AGC pulses comprise non similar AGC signals from one video line to another video line. The dis-similar AGC pulses may include pulses which are deleted, blanked, attenuated, pulse width modified, modulated, etc. In addition, selected sync pulses may be pulse width, amplitude and or position modified.