Sonny

I've noticed a number of John Cassavetes box sets on ebay and some are from Hong Kong at great prices. The sellers have excellent feedback. They note that the boxes have some Chinese printing on the box, along with the English printing. Has anyone ever bought one of these? Does Criterion do this?

Cameron

they are bootlegs...criterion is only in Region 1...

chesola

Criterion + Hong Kong = Bootleg

Sonny

Thanks you guys. I suspected as much, but it was tempting due to the prices.

dx23

All "Criterions" that come from any place except the United States are bootlegs. Criterion only produces for Region 1 (US, Canada, Puerto Rico) and if somebody on ebay, no matter what feedback, is selling Criterions with Chinese characters, then they are liars and theives.

marty888

Generally, if you have to ask .... you've got your answer.

PopcornTreeCt

If the price is too good to be true, then it is.

Squirrel God

I like to call them Criteriongs or Chinterions.

It keeps me amused during the quiet hours.

ThatGuamGuy

When in doubt, E-mail the seller. It's entirely possible that somebody in a foreign country would've picked up a Criterion. And it's also not entirely true to say they're all R1; many have no region coding. That said, if they're from Asia, they're almost always bootlegs, but if you are tempted and want to be sure, E-mail the seller. If it's not a bootleg, they'll tell you, and if it is a bootleg, they won't respond.

DanishDVDfreak

Uhm...ever wonder if any of them would...LIE ?! *gasp*

Im amazed at how easy it is to make people believe something. If you email the seller and he/she says its not a bootleg, that doesn´t automatically make it so...and neither does "factory sealed" "brand new" "official chinese release"

...and pics of disc are pretty easy to come by too...takes less than 5 seconds on google

Cameron

what criterions are region 0?

speedy1961

Of course. You want MSG on that?

ThatGuamGuy

I'm just speaking from experience; I also can't prove that non-response equals bootleg, since I won't buy if they don't respond. But I do know that it doesn't seem worth their time to lie. If somebody cares enough to ask, they're not the target audience for the bootleggers. I know it seems like it's not worth asking, because they can lie, but, in my experience, they don't even bother to lie. (If you're paranoid about lying, why buy on E-bay at all? A seller can be lying about having the item at all, let alone about it being sealed / new / not a bootleg.)

I actually won an auction once and then realized it was probably a bootleg, so I sent an E-mail which said, "Hey, listen, level with me, is this a bootleg? If I give you the money and it winds up being one, I'm just gonna demand a refund, and we're both gonna be put out, so just tell me, I won't report you or anything, we'll just cancel the trade." Never got back to me, so I didn't pay, and didn't get a "non-payment" thing.

But the point of the E-mail is that it makes it that much easier to get your money back if you do buy a bootleg, because it's a clear instance of the seller lying. [Plus, like I say, they *NEVER* respond.]

Incidentally, my favorite bootleg indication is when the bootleggers don't understand what certain words mean, and use "Criterion" as if it means "Special Edition", describing movies which were never released by Criterion.

ThatGuamGuy

My understanding is it's the default unless the copyright holder wants the release to be limited for some reason. I've seen a list on either the HTF or Criterion forums, I'll see if I can find the link.

EDIT: Silly me, it was *this* site all along! I'll link it, because the list is (obviously) really long. Scroll down to the last post, it tells you what region each release is which, while not exactly the answer to your question, is still pretty close.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406793

Breezy_Pete1

Cameron,

I wrote Criterion a while ago and found out that at least Hard Boiled and The Killer were region zero.

Peter

NestoJR

they're most likely bootlegs, if the price is too good to be true.. then it usually is.... especialy if the seller is constantly selling copies of the movie. I almost fell into this as several months ago I got into non-region dvds. I saw movies that were a couple dollars where I was used to be $25-40. Sure they rape you on shipping but hey you're still getting a good deal. but the regions never matched up to official releases and so I never pursued any of those auctions. Also, I asked several sellers if they were original or burnt/copied and same response everytime "original, brand new, factory sealed." Yeah, from the bootleg factory.

As for the sellers' feedback, they all have positives mostly as I'm sure they have regular buyers and even the occasional buyers are probably happy with what they got and don't question/care about its authenticity. Not everyone is as picky as us who frequent this board or dvdbeaver, the Secrets' DVD benchmark, etc. Its up to you though, your judgement and your money.

chemosh6969

Negative.

I have had people email me back and tell me it wasn't a bootleg.

One guy kept insulting me in each email until I got him to the point I wanted him to be. Then I sent an email with a quote from the criterion faq which said

"Oftentimes, bootlegs will be advertised as official Asian Criterion DVDs. This is not to be trusted! Criterion has never released alternate Asian editions of any of our DVDs and we have no plans to do so."

After that he stopped talking to me.

littlefuzzy

Fixed! (okay, 80-90% of the time, anyway...)

Mike Lowrey

Dang, you mean my Criterion version of 2 Fast 2 Furious is a bootleg? I thought I had something worth some money.

garmonbozia

while this is true...Criterion still does not distribute these dvds outside of North America (although some can be found available from foreign websites that import them in themselves).....so the chances of someone from Asia selling a copy on the US ebay that they bought legitimately from US or Canada....is rather slim.

ThatGuamGuy

Fair enough; I should amend my initial point to be that if you E-mail them *properly*, ie "Look, I know this is bullshit and you know this is bullshit, but can you just tell me flat out whether it's bullshit?" will garner the desired non-response/lie.

Squirrel God

Criterion might not distribute them outside of N America but plenty of N American retailers will happily do so. The biggest reason why it's unlikely to be legitimate is cost (exchange rate, etc).

clappj

Got Bootreg?

Njål

Just to nitpick, there have been a couple of official Criterion releases (official ports of the R1 releases, distributed by other companies) in Europe, for instance the Beastie Boys set in the UK and Armageddon set in France.
Any R3 Asian release called a Criterion will be a boot, though.

Truffaut Fan

The Dutch Release of "Dead Ringers" was licensed by Criterion and says "Criterion Collection" right on the front.