Overseas DVD's - Regions, Etc

[aychamo_aycono]

Hello All

I've escaped my Screenshots forum to pay a visit to the 2nd most visited forum here at Foh-Guild. I need some quick advice on this subject:

My parents are overseas on vacation, currently in Chiang-Mai, Thailand. My dad said they found some place that sells DVD's, obviouslly pirated. Movies like The Two Towers, 8-Mile, etc. He said on them they say will play on all-regions of DVD Players.

Does anyone have any experience with these types of DVDs?

Cool!

[Sihriel]

Chiang Mai rules ! Best city in Thailand hands down.
Tell them to try those sausages, they're a delight =)

No idea about the DVD thing - though you can count on Thailand to get it right done ... never found a store there that sold anything CD-like legit.
I remember paying 1$ for a PS game ... less than the price of the CD itself hehe.

[aychamo_aycono]

Awesome! So the CD worked? They said the DVD's were only like 5 bucks.

God damn why did I pass up this trip? What have I fucking done but posted 200 times in these message boards since they've been gone.. My dad got a massage in a different city in Thailand, the famous kind, haha, but no sex! (poor guy!)

[Nightfeller]

I had a friend who went there and bought about 25dvd's for less than 5bucks each. Superb he thought and when he came home half of them didint even work and those who did had parts of the screen cut out so you couldn't see everything. I think he got 2 dvds that you could acctually see without beeing too disturbed about the quality.

[Suineg]

Most likely it will work I would suggest going to www.vcdhelp.com and looking up your DVD player in their database and it will tell you whether or not your DVD player will support SVC, VCD, DVD-r, etc.. It is a helpful tool to find a new DVD player to buy and I love having one that has all the options. If you want a cheap player that will play most things you can place on a DVD I would suggest getting an Apex. They are cheap and they play everything mpeg on a CD when burned as a vcd or svcd.

[Crazekan]

He's not talking about VCD's.

I have a lot of DVD's from secret pirate island (aka hong kong) they all work, i reckon they will work from there too=P

[Fender]

Region coding is just another way to ensure that American movie companies' pockets stay lined.

There are ways to hack your player (firmware upgrades) to play discs from any region...but AFIAK some of them require soldering shit hehe.

Remember, circumventing "protection" is illegal and can land you in court if you get caught, even if you legally own both the DVD and the player.

If I contribute to enough Congressional campaigns can I get any law passed that I want too?

[Iannis]

this is a Millie topic, really.

Anyway, yeah. All region means they'll work. I forgot what the breakdown is...like, Americans get region 1 dvds, and every frickin other dvd player in the world is a region 2.

If I ever go to hong kong i'm buying a friggin' crate of lower-priced dvds and going to cut in on the profits over here. Right after I set up a print shop to print a "new edition"(exactly the same) textbook every year and sell them for 200 dollars. FU USED BOOK STORES!!!

[Thand]

www.yesasia.com


http://us.yesasia.com/en/Electronics...ronics&code=c&

lots of good all region dvd players

[aychamo_aycono]

These asian pirated DVDs,,, Are these like a copy of the movie, or is it like filmed (aka Kazza)?

[Stroker Ace]

There most likely MPEG-1/MPEG-2 (VCD/SVCD) burnt onto a CD-R that is playable on a DVD player that supports it. Might be DVD-R but most of that overseas shit is Telesync and Cam's with shit quality.

I myself have Narc, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Interstate 60, About Shmicht, 007 Die Another Day, Spider, Bowling for Columbine, Adaptation, Gangs of New York, and a couple more that are almost DVD quality (about VHS) burnt to VCD. All for the price of FREE.

Just have to look around people.

[Matrixcyan]

One of my friends lived in india for a month, and came back with about 100 different pirated movies on DVD format. he said most were pretty good, but you get the odd piece of shit. In the end though, he said it was worth it.

If your dad is worried about taking them through customs, just tell him to say that he brought the cd's with him so he could listen to music and watch movies at home etc in his hotel. They can't do a thing about it.

[shin]

I think All-Region DVDs are different from being able to play on Region 1/2 players, etc... they'll probably work on computer DVD players but not much else.

[Palimax]

I've ordered a number of asian DVDs in my time, and here's what you need to know:

Pressed silver DVDs from asia are either (a) simple digital copies of existing DVDs resold without any licensing fees, or (b) ahead-of-market pirate films, remastered not from an existing digital source, but from the same theater recordings you see in newsgroups and on P2P programs.

For example. When Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was big, the DVD release date in region-2 was a year or so before ours, so, you snatch a perfect digital copy, make your own region-free royalty-free copy, and see it on the street or our of your website for 100% proffit, minus the cost of the media. Ditto during the Jacky Chan heyday. His films hit region-2 release a year or so before they're in the theaters here. Honest vendors sell the licensed region-2 release from BigAsianStuidio, while the pirate ones on the street are comercially pressed by "underground" (and underground is relative) companies - again, without the licensing or region restrictions.

You asked about buying The Two Towers now. Since to date, there is no known studio produced digial source for The Two Towers (they kept a pretty tight reign on screening copies), any TTT DVD you'd buy would have to be from an analog-digital transfer done with a film-copy of the movie and a digital camera. Quality varies. YMMV.

(That said, this is Oscar season, so every movie is pouring out on DVD screeners, and those screeners are being overnighted to Hong Kong so they can be stripped of any identifying data, have their region codes removed, and then be pressed onto shiny silver disks.)

Someone mentioned www.vcdquality.com -- and they're a great resource. Look at the movies coming out. The guys ripping movies onto VCDs and SVCDs use the same asian silvers to make their films half the time anyway. The rest of the time they're either recording them themselves, or buying them off the street corner in Time Square where us old folks used to have to pirate our movies before Al Gore invented the internet

[Palimax]

As a follow-up, the DVD Screener for The Two Towers came out today. http://www.vcdquality.com/info.php?id=9368

I get DVD screeners for real (I'm one step removed from an Academy voter) so I guess I'll have to return all my art-house films and go pick this up and burn my own until a cleaner version hits the retail shelves.

[The DVD screeners normally lack 5.1 or DTS sound, and are rarely anything more than a "first pass" DVD. Making a "good" DVD release is a lot more involved, and includes constant tuning to get the bitrate right in each scene and make things look good. Take a look at the recent Back to The Future Fiasco for reference - http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=112569 ]