I recently bought the DVD set of "Adventures of Brisco County JR." on eBay from a seller for $41.00 (great price considering the least I've seen it was $69.99). The DVD was just released and the seller had about a dozen on auction fairly cheap ($35 - $50).
Well it just arrived and as promised, new in the shrink wrap. The only problem is that there's a large scratch (more like a gouge, really) through the shrink wrap and into the UPC. It's about a cm. wide and an inch long. The bar code is unreadable. Being as picky about my DVDs as the rest of you, this bugs me.
My question is: is the defacing of the UPC related to why the seller has so many copies so cheap? Would every copy they sell be the same then? If so, what is the reasoning by making it unreadable?

They do this with screeners - scratch out the UPC that is. That might be why he's able to sell it off at such a low price without any real monetary loss.

Though, unless you get the color to black white fading or those incredibly annoying screener reminders every 15 minutes, it's probably worth it .. well, unless you want to resell it at some point.

Usually if it's in the actual packaging with shrink wrap, you're not going to have the fading or screener reminders. The studio probably didn't want the bother of producing an actual screener, so they just shipped out actual copies as screeners. The only issue with it should be the UPC defacing.

Complimentary and/or reviewer copies will usually have the bar code rendered unusable - but since you're planning on spending hours and hours watching the actual DVDs, not the bar code, shouldn't be a big deal.

Thanks, I was just wondering about it. making sure it was on the up and up before I opened it.
I was already a bit anoyed at the seller. I won and paid for the DVD on July 16th, I just recieved it today (it was mailed on the 29th). So I think I was looking for something else to complain about.

I have to think that it would be significantly easier for you to ask the guy you bought it from these questions, rather than having us here speculate as to the answers.

Assuming that the auction did not mention the damaged packaging, you all fully within your rights to ask for an explanation and, potentially, a replacement/refund. I doubt he'll replace it (especially with a mint copy), but you never know.

May have been a screener or promo/giveaway/discount copy. ADV punches out UPCs for their 'clearance' sales, and I've won a couple of DVDs from websites that have had the UPC cutout. So you can't return them for cash/credit, and so the reviewers are more likely to actually review them.

If he's got a bunch of them, then it sounds like he's got a case of comp copies; depending on how he got them, that might be a violation of whatever agreement he had to make to get them.

If it was advertised as 'new, mint, etc', well, it doesn't sound like it to me. A one-inch divot anywhere on the case disqualifies it as 'mint' for me. If it is 'new, in factory shrinkwrap', well, that's still true. Plus the moral qualms of him profiting from something that was given to him, and that he was not meant to resell [making assumptions as to how he received these].

I got recently bought BU's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAAL PLUMAGE (2disc) from a guy on eBay-he had it a day or two before official release, and when I got it-it was shrink wrapped, with a hole punched on the UPC in the "O" card cover;
Niavely, I asked him how such a new DVD could be a "cut out" or a "remainder"?
I informed him that disc 2 had a formidable scratch on it, and would have to sit down and watch it all before seeing if it stopped the player.

By the time you could say "Argento!" he had the full price I paid back in my PP account.
Now he did have a 100% rating, and his explanation is that he would rather keep it that way than have even ONE red mark against him-and he said to keep the disc, which turned out that both play just fine.

I won a free copy of Season One of the new Battlestar Galactica series from one of the most popular DVD web sites and when it arrived, it had a scratch through the UPC code. It was still shrink wrapped, but the UPC was cut through. I'm sure that it was a promo copy that the site had received for their contest. The DVD's and content were identical to retail, there was just the scratch on the outer slipcase.

I, too, am anal about the condition of my DVD cases, but let's face it, free is free

As others have pointed out, that's just what is usually done to full retail products that are sent out to be reviewed, contests, etc so you don't walk into BestBuy or some other store and try to return it for money or exchange for something else. It's pretty useless to discourage people from selling online, but probably works for retail outlets. I'm sure most of the retail stuff Geoff gets for the reviewers have the same kind of markings.