BlueMan1

I am going to be in NYC this weekend. Where is a good place to find an awsome selection of foriegn or orther hard to find DVDs?

jeffrey r

The Tower Records near Lincoln Center has a big DVD collection upstairs, with a lot of foreign titles. Pricing is hit or miss, so you may be turned off a bit. But their DVD department is pretty well organized. Some places like Circuit City and Best Buy around the City have pretty poor DVD departments that are utterly disorganized.

toddly6666

ALL FOREIGN DVDs:
Kim's Video (it’s the best international DVD store in NYC...or even the world!)
6 St. Marks Place, 2nd Floor, NYC
(Between 2nd and 3rd Ave)
Video Rentals 212-505-0311
Sales Floor 212-614-8941

JAPANESE DVDs:
Book Off
14 E 41st Street, NYC
(Between Fifth Ave & Madison Ave)
212-685-1410

JAPANESE DVDs:
HQ Video (it’s the best Japanese DVD store in NYC)
21 West 45th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC
(Between 5th & 6th Ave)
Phone: 212-221-0027

JAPANESE DVDs:
Midnight Video
35 West 43rd Street, 2nd Floor, NYC
(Between 5th Ave & 6th Ave)
212-827-0502

HONG KONG/CHINESE DVDs:
There are three stores on Bowery street near the corner of Canal Street in Chinatown

KOREAN DVDs:
Korya Bookstore (which has very big selection of Korean DVD) and two other Korean DVD stores
Somewhere on 32nd Street, NYC
(Between 6th and 5th Ave)

RUSSIAN/FRANCE/ITALY DVDs:
There are about 4 Russian DVD stores in a radius of about 6 blocks on Brighton Beach Ave. (make sure to look on 2nd floor in some stores for the European PAL DVDs)
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (40 minutes from center of Manhattan by subway)

POLISH DVDs:
Go to Greenpoint, Queens (20 minutes from center of Manhattan by subway)

INDIAN/TAMIL DVDs:
Go to Jackson Heights, Queens (30 minutes from center of Manhattan by subway)

GREEK DVDs:
Go to Long Island City, Queens (20 minutes from center of Manhattan by subway)

TURKISH DVDs:
Take the N or R subway to 36th street stop to get to the Tulumba.com store at:
934 Third Avenue, 1st Flr
Brooklyn, NY 11232

BlueMan1

WOW!!! excellent...thanx for the quick responses

BTW. Can anyone confirm if you can find the 2-Disc Hungarian release of Kontroll anywhere in NYC?

siegfried

I was at Kim's in the Village last October for the first time,
and I was disappointed in the selection of the non region 1 DVD's.
Also, there prices are outrageous.

toddly6666

SIEGFRIED,
They may seem expensive, but if you factor in shipping for non-Region 1 DVDs from an online store, it comes out to the same or more. Kim's is the only place in NYC that sells international DVDs so the selection they have is pretty good in comparison to nothing. Did you go to the St. Marks street Kim's video? That's the only one that has tons of international DVDs. There are other Kim's in the city that have less selection. What one shouldn't do is buy Asian DVDs from Kim's. Now that's a rip-off and waste of money when one can go to Chinatown.

BLUEMAN,
Kim's doesn't have the 2-disk KONTROLL. They are a bit slow with getting the hot new foreign DVD. For example, when it was time to buy the DVD of Battle Royale, Old Boy, Ong Bak, Best of Youth, Immortal and Night Watch, other stores (bootleg stores and online stores) had them about a month earlier. But they do get them eventually. They also never know if they are getting a DVD in or not. Even if they order it and you ask them when it's coming in, they always say that they have no idea...

FantasticVSDoom

Just be sure to really pay attention at Kim's because there are alot of bootlegs...I did get my Oppo from them though for the same price that you can get it anywhere else without S&H.

The Bus

No one's mentioned J&R Records? I thought their store had some of the best DVD selections I've ever seen. Not any/a lot of non-R1 stuff, but they had some discs that I had never seen in a B&M before.

toddly6666

J & R is the best chain DVD store for Region 1 DVDs.
Tower and Virgin have a good selection of Region 1 too, but they are expensive. Virgin, by the way, has started to sell import PAL dvds - it's only a tiny selection though. But that's progress!

marty888

Virgin's tiny selection is useless and outrageously priced - makes Kim's seem like a bargain.

J & R probably has the biggest selection (R1) in the city - but they are NOT a chain store. Their only location is opposite City Hall.

teamwinfan

Went to Kim's while in New York. I was personally assigned a security guard to follow me around the store to make sure I wasn't shoplifting, and even heard them talking about me on their radio. What a joke! Picked up a few cheap used titles I needed though..

Doc Moonlight

I've seen no mention of Entertainment Outlet. Are they still around?

toddly6666

Entertainment Outlet on 40th street and 14th street are excellent as well for a big selection of dvds and they are low priced. They buy and sell used DVDs as well. Entertainment Outlet used to release DVDs before release dates, but they don't do that anymore. If anything, a smaller or stupider movie may be released a week or two earlier at the store. But if it's any huge, big-name movie coming to DVD, it will not be there until the official release day. They sell bootlegs of foreign films on DVD, so be on your guard. And if you ask them the quality of a bootleg, they will play dumb. But actually, I don't think they are playing dumb, they are actually really really dumb. A lot of the people working there have no idea what "anamorphic" means.


The guards at KIM'S are extremely annoying. They not only follow people around, but they like to make the used DVD area look pretty after one goes through the DVDs on their inefficient DVD shelves which have the DVDs fallling all over the place...