I just saw what looks like an amazing deal on eBay. An 11 DVD set of Kurosawa's movies put out by a Chinese company called Boying. The packaging looks nice, and the discs are region free with English subtitles. Does anyone know anything about these? Do you think they're bootlegs?

The deal is that you can buy them for as little as 1 cent plus about US$34 shipping.

It's almost tempting, but I wanted to see if anyone else has had any experience with these discs.

Bootleg discussion? This shant be up much longer...

Take it easy. I'm ASKING if anyone thinks it could be a bootleg. It's quite possible it's a legitimate Chinese release. That's why I'm here. To find out from people who may know more than I do...

only legitimate chinese company to release Kurosawa DVDs are from Meh Ah.
The 11 disc set is a bootleg version.

It should be obvious that an 11 disc set coming from a Chinese company for $34 are bootlegs.

Well, I wasn't sure how much DVDs cost in China. My company sources corkscrews from a Chinese manufacturer for about a tenth of what they cost in North America, so I thought it could be legit. Thanks for the quick replies, guys!

As already pointed out, this screams "bootleg". Also consider this: charging 1 cent for an item (ANY item, legit or not) and $34 for shipping is a sign of fee avoidance - he's trying to screw eBay out of its legit fees based on the selling price of the item (no fees on shipping charges), so he's already established that he's a rip-off artist.

BoYing is actually a legitimate company out of China, but unfortuantely, many of the legitimate companies from the Mainland still put out bootlegs. Same goes for Zoke Culture. They are a huge legitimate company from Mainland China, but sometimes you get bootlegs from them (all of the Miyazaki/Ghibli DVD's, for instance).

This thread is still here? Its actually funny, because the covers are exact duplicates of the Criterion releases! What balls!

There is the set in Japan,not sure if it's all his movies.But there is a box set.Unless you can fork out hundreds of $$$

It's too bad there aren't English subs on the Japanese Kurosawa discs though. They're supposed to look much better than the Criterion ones.

And oh yeah, that boxset on Ebay is definitely a boot. HK discs are cheap, but they aren't that cheap. There is no way that legitimate discs licenced from Toho would cost the equivalent of $3.00 US each.

the HK ones are 3 bucks and change at dddhouse.

Here set the Box Sets
The Masterworks 1 DVD Box Set $400


The Masterworks 2 DVD Box Set $400


The Masterworks 3 DVD Box Set $400

Actually all legit dvds in China cost around $2 - $3 averagely, include Jet Li Hero DVD. So $34 for 11 discs set doesn't necessarily mean it's bootleg. I'm just talking about the price.

All kurosawa dvds on dddhouse cost $3 each.

Whoops, I stand corrected. (I guess I've gotten used to paying around $11 each for the Shaw Bros./Celestial discs, and forgot how dirt cheap many other HK discs are )

Actually korean dvds are such cheap too. www.koreandvds.com often have lots of dvds on sale at $3-$5.

such as http://www.koreandvds.com/special_me...?type=4&id=146

Who says? Criterion's "Seven Samurai" is one of their earlier discs, and rumor is it will be redone. "Yojimbo", "Sanjuro" and "High and Low" are not anamorphic, but other than that I don't think the Criterions are likely to yield anything in quality to the Japanese releases.

By the way, whether those Mei Ah discs are legit or not, they are a pretty crappy lot, with poor encoding and AWFUL subtitle translations.

I've seen side to side comparisons of SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO and the Toho discs look much better than the Criterion ones. It's more than the Criterion discs not being anamorphic, they are also a bit misframed and the Toho discs have been transferred from better film elements (elements that they apparently didn't share with Criterion). Maybe (hopefully) Criterion can do a better job if they reissue the discs, but for now, the Toho discs look the best (Criterion is a good company but some of their earlier DVDs are FAR from definitive. Their Seijun Suzuki discs could use some improvement too, for example)