What about China's DVD Business.

Are these things legal or not?

[King_Fisher]

Was searching around trying to find some good prices on a A "Star Wars" total

series box set. Prices are pretty much lower than any where else.(Chinese site)

My questions are:

1. Are they legal? or bootleg or copies etc.

2. Is the quality any good? Images and sound?

3. If illegal how do they get away with selling them here in the US?

Thanks for any info...KF

[edited by: King_Fisher at 8:10 am (utc) on April 14, 2008]

[Habtom]

Are they legal?

I don't know the ones you mentioned in the US, but here it is not legal. The DVDs very much look like the originals unless you closely check the details.

The covers are redesigned (most of the time, I think), and it is common to find a few spelling errors almost all the time.

Is the quality any good? Images and sound?

I bought a few of them a couple of years ago, and one of the problems I have had was having the wrong movies recorded inside the DVDs you happen to buy. A few other times, you need to skip a few scenes (stops responding) to get to the end.

This is 30 or 40 percent of the time, I couldn't tell the difference with the original the rest of the time.

[Rosalind]

I don't believe China has the same enforcement of copyright law as most of the rest of the world. Just search for <snip> or <snip> and you'll see what I mean.

[edited by: lawman at 10:28 am (utc) on April 14, 2008]
[edit reason] Specifics Not Allowed [/edit]

[thecoalman]

1. Are they legal? or bootleg or copies etc.

Probably bootlegs, China and many asian countries are the source of most bootlegs.

2. Is the quality any good? Images and sound?

Depends but you can make and exact rip of DVD so most likely its the same as original version. Most of the bootlegs coming from there are professionally pressed discs which requires a bit of invesment and machinery. They also come complete with professionally printed jacket covers. You may not even be able to tell the difference between the real one and the bootleg if you had them side by side... ironically some of these bootleggers take a lot of pride in their work and you may actually even get a better version with more cover art or extras. I've even heard reports of bootleggers actually fixing issues with originals.

3. If illegal how do they get away with selling them here in the US?

Probably because of lax enforcement by the Chinese and other governments in that area.

[topr8]

i have no idea about the items you have seen ...

however, although the chinese and the far east markets are flooded with bootlegs there are official/real dvd's there too and they are cheaper.

technically it is a breach of the licence to sell them outside the intended country, manufacturers of all kinds (not just dvd's) do this ... it is a kind of price fixing, eg. the prices in some countries are lower than others.

official chinese version dvd's will probably have chinese subtitles (which can be turned off) and all the writing will be in chinese - if the writing is in english then probably it is a pirate/bootleg copy

[thecoalman]

Ahh forgot about the different regions. If they are official releases they will also have different region coding and won't play on your DVD player at all if it's from a different region.

The bootlegs will most likely have the region coding removed and will work on any DVD player.