I have ordered a few titles from China over the years, some more well known as others, and a lot of them are of such high quality, I cannot tell from the packaging or the actual image on the TV screen, whether or not they are fakes or illegal copies.
Most DVD's or when VHS was about, you could tell it was a copy because the picture was either crap or the sound was like the whole film was made underwater and you couldn't make out what people were saying. I done some research with legitimate manufacturers in the UK by sending them a DVD ordered from China, along with the packaging etc, and they told me its simply a Region 1 NTSC version of the product.
This got me thinking that if a manufacturer of DVD's or CD's in the UK couldn't tell the difference, then I think the terms "Its a fake DVD", "Its not a real copy at that price" "Chinese Rip Off" etc shouldn't really be used. It should be more like "Its an illegal unauthorised copy" as I think DVD's that are made in factories in China have been authorised and paid by large movie companies to make so many copies of a DVD, and then cease production. What the Chinese do I believe is continue running the presses of whatever movie or programme they have been asked to create, however when the deadline comes, they just ignore it and continue making them.
Most of them are either Region 0 (FREE) or are Region 1. The thing about Region protection on DVD's nowadays is that it doesn't really mean anything anymore, as most peoples DVD players are multi-region DVD players, which means they can read any DVD from any country. When the multi region DVD player came out, it pretty much made obsolete all the region encoding for different countries all over the world to help stamp out piracy.
Fair enough some shoddy Chinese copies of DVD's you can spot easily especially if you read the descriptions on the back. Some have some very bad spelling mistakes which a company would never put into print production until it was fixed, as quality control would definitely pickup on it. I bought a box set of True Blood Season 1, brilliant price, amazing picture and sound, great detail on packaging along with all insert art etc...but on the back soon as took it out of box noticed a review snippet on the back says it was "Terrfig.....sexy....witty.....wildly imaginative". Of course it means to say its "Terrific" but they may have been eating a fig roll biscuit at the time and got distracted when typing it in for printing the covers.
Also a lot of the "Unauthrosied Copies" copy the region 1 packaging or NTSC versions because there is usually no classfication of an age range you need to be i norder to watch the DVD. Compare each of the DVD cases with one in the UK and you will see the BBFC rating on them as well as (with newer printed DVD's and reissues) the Irish Classification which is a blue hexagon symbol beside the BBFC ones.
Just thought I would give it a mention incase you thought all the pictures of Chinese DVD's were crap. The ones to watch out for a which are a con when buying online is the Blu-ray DVD's from China. They are not truely blu-ray discs, but are just very high quality DVD discs and so is the file that has been burned onto them containign the film. No reduction in quality will be done for these discs. Not all display so well however on HDTV's as one my freind bought had lots of pixelated black blocks appear now and again at certain points which no one could explain.
Henry
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