kyle

Often on ebay, I will see cheap listings for US, UK or CA TV shows that are being billed as "non-bootleg, official mainland China release".

Is there any site to find info on these so-called official releases, or a reputable on-line etailer of such items?

Thanks,
-Kyle

Josh Z

They're all bootlegs, regardless of what the listing says.

Subgeniusguy

Not only are they bootlegs, they are generally substandard quality. Don't buy them.

toddly6666

What about the VCDs? Are those bootlegs too sometimes? Eventhough, I don't buy VCDs, Im just curious if they sell bootlegs of VCDs. In Chinatown DVD/CD stores, they got probably even more stuff on VCD than DVD...

Josh Z

Yes, quite often. VCDs are even easier to bootleg than DVDs.

In fact, does anyone even still release legitimate VCDs anymore?

Alkaline

Yup. Still some to be found in China. On account of being so much cheaper than dvd.

Alkaline

Also, as far as the notion of mainland China releases of U.S., UK, etc. shows inherently being bootlegs--I kind of doubt it. It seems logical to me that there would indeed be some official mainland releases of at least some such shows. There are official mainland China releases of tons of american films...why not tv shows? I'm not huge into tv on dvd, but that's my guess. My advice, Kyle, would be to check sites like hkflix.com, sensasian.com, yesasia.com, etc. and see if some of these mainland releases pop up there. Ebay is definitely full of bootlegs, but not everything is a bootleg. You just have to do some research on a given item first, is all. Many people have (understandably) written of Ebay entirely for dvds--particularly product from Asia--on account of not wanting to deal with the bootleg situation, but there's plenty of authentic stuff to be had.

Josh Z

If these were legitimate studio releases of American shows, they'd be region coded for the territory of release. The stuff on eBay isn't region coded. They're bootlegs.

Although there are some Asian films and TV shows released by Asian studios without region coding, the American rights holders to American movies and shows would not license their content to a foreign distributor without contractually insisting on region coding. Every region-all DVD box set sold on eBay to an American customer undercuts the sales of the legitimate Region 1 studio release.

dleedlee

Here is an example of a seemingly (since I don't own it) legit series, region coded, from Warner Home Video, who until recently had a joint venture in China with a chain of movie theatres.

http://www.buyoyo.com/cgi-bin/ncomme...AGE=1&curr=USD

Now, obviously, there is nothing to stop a bootlegger from copying, stripping the region coding and repackaging it, then mass producing and selling it cheaply. But that's a function for eBay.

Lots of Korean version R3 TV series here
http://www.dvdfromkorea.com/

For mainland releases you might try joyo.com or dangdang.com or cnave.com

Alkaline

I didn't realize the ones he encountered on ebay were all R0. If it's American content, foreign releases will virtually always be region coded, that's true.

Josh Z

Pretty much all "Asian Collector Edition" TV on DVD box sets found on eBay are region-all bootlegs.

If the price sounds too good to be true and the listing says region-free, it's a bootleg almost 100% of the time.