Seeing a large watermark at the bottom of your screen while watching content? This is the logo that usually describes the exclusivity of certain content for a specific streaming service.
Take, for example, the Netflix app. Netflix does not allow users to screen record or screenshot its content while there are no watermarks or logos on the screen.
Taking the Starz app as an example, they have no restrictions on screen recording their content, instead displaying a logo/watermark that describes the exclusivity of the content from their service.
So this is how every platform protects its copyright content or combats content piracy.
Resolving Starz Logo On Screen:
After all of the commotion on multiple forums across the internet asking how to remove the Starz logo from the screen, users have discovered that this is an issue that cannot be resolved, unlike other streaming issues with some general troubleshooting steps.
Though having a large watermark or logo on the screen while watching their favorite show is quite distracting for users who stream content on these platforms regularly.
The fact that these watermarks appear and disappear at random makes their nature even more irritating, but there is nothing you can do about it because it is determined by the developers.
There is no explicit way to remove the watermark from the screen, and you will have to live with it. However, there are some things you can do to provide a temporary solution.
- Cover The Watermark Area:
We know it sounds untechnical, but covering the watermark area on your screen will prevent your eyes from wandering to that part of the screen unintentionally, and you will feel a lot better about not having to see the watermark.
The watermark is usually located in the lower right corner of the screen, away from the subtitles area, so you can cover it with a cover or a small piece of cardboard. When you don’t see it, there are no distractions on the app’s main screen.
- Use A VPN:
According to user claims and research, the Starz logo is only available to people who stream and download content in the United States. Surprisingly, when you watch a show in another region on Starz, the logo and watermark are not visible.
To test this, use a VPN that is located outside of the United States. You can connect to free VPNs from Google on your PCs or mobile phones.
Try watching a video and if it works for you, you have one of the best ways to remove the watermark from your screen.
- Use A Third Party FFmpeg:
FFmpeg is a free and open-source code organization for audio and video formats. This tool allows you to do a wide range of things with your videos and audio, including removing the watermark from your application.
This hack has not been tried and tested for Starz users, but if it works for you, nothing beats it. Overlaying logos and watermarks can be removed using FFmpeg.
So, if these watermarks are not hardcoded into the content, you can easily remove them using the following procedure.
You must first convert the format of your video content to.MP4 if it is not already in that format. Then, in the Linux shell, run the following command.
“ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf “delogo=x=270:y=190:w=40:h=40” -c:a copy output.mp4”
Many users do not use double quotations which give them unrecognized error. So be careful about this part of the code. Now you can re-encode your video stream to remove the watermark displaying over your content.
- Contact Customer Support:
If you are enthusiastic about removing the watermark from the screen and the above-mentioned steps did not help you then you can contact Starz customer support and explain your query.
Or you can post a question about this watermark issue on the Starz official forum where most likely you will get tried and tested solutions (if any) for this issue.