Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: MillCreek on January 28, 2012, 12:41:47 PM
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I want to buy a copy of 'The Shootist' on DVD. EBay has several for a reasonable price. They are listed as Region 0 DVDs from South Korea and claim to play in all DVD players. I have a Sony and a Panasonic Blu-ray player. Do Region 0 DVDs really play in Region 1 players? I see from Wikipedia that Region 0 means that they are uncoded.
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Why not just get a US version
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shootist-DVD-John-Wayne-Lauren-Bacall-Johns-Last-Western-/110815611479?pt=US_DVD_HD_DVD_Blu_ray&hash=item19cd200a57#ht_500wt_1156
My first thought with South Korean, uncoded, Ebay DVD's is "If you'e going to by pirated movie's just bittorrent one?"
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I actually just bid on that one.
The South Korean DVDs say in the listing that they are not pirated or torrented versions.
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ft0.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcSqnFjgye7opDvZ-qDsmG_BFI-gzhAmXdtPLDxs6MgTC2jhEbFl&hash=2528883f1b15fb23c51bfef25798459d96e561e3)
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It isn't buggy, is it...? =|
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At my local Wal-Mart and Best Buy, I buy $ 5 DVDs from the bargain bin all the time. They also sell DVDs from Mexico, India and Russia for even less. So I am not certain that low price necessarily equals pirated.
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IIRC, Region 0 discs will play on any region's players. Seems to me that I have a couple - I think the copy of Cool Hand Luke that I ordered from Amazon a couple months ago for Composition II was a Region 0 disc.
I frequently hit the bargain bins at WalMart, and have never had issues playing the discs.
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I have one my computer even refuses to recognize as a disc. It's Blu-ray, should play, I set my computer's region. Who knows.
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The South Korean DVDs say in the listing that they are not pirated or torrented versions.
The import DVD market is notoriously shady in that respect. I know several people who thought they were getting a screaming deal on a movie, especially ones that had yet to be released on DVD in the Region 1 markets, but ended up getting a disc that was a horrible mess. In one instance the content was a video the DVD maker had taken of the movie while he was watching it in the theater, complete with the chatter of everyone around him.
There's no such thing as a Region 0 encoding format. What that means is the producer has somehow removed all the region coding and remastered the disk or he's done some sort of video capture. In either case I will presume the quality to be markedly inferior to a legitimate version.
I would say to buy a domestically produced version so you know what you're getting. Amazon has a whole list of sellers with good used DVD versions of The Shootist for under $25, shipped.
Brad
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Hmmm. Well this is all very interesting. I had looked at the packaging, and I thought it was domestically produced for the South Korean market. It offers Korean subtitles as well, which I would not expect someone to go to that trouble for a pirated version. The sellers have great ratings, too.
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What is the purpose of region coding to begin with?
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Probably the same reason game system companies use different codings for the games they sell overseas.
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We buy bargain bin DVDs at Walmart and I don't recall ever having any problems.
Also, the pawn shop sells DVDs for $2 - $4 and will give you half price if/when you bring it back :cool:
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Hmmm. Well this is all very interesting. I had looked at the packaging, and I thought it was domestically produced for the South Korean market. It offers Korean subtitles as well, which I would not expect someone to go to that trouble for a pirated version. The sellers have great ratings, too.
DVDs legitimately produced for the South Korean market will be set for Region 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
I think I am looking at the import disc you were seeing on ebay. Something about it is sending up all the red flags. I can't exactly say why, but this seems to fall under the "If it looks to good to be true it probably is" rule.
You mentioned his seller rating. I looked through the sold items and it appears they specialize in foreign sourced movies, many of which I question the validity of because there are some pretty high-rated titles being sold for less than what I would presume the copyright holder's royalty would be on the unit.
Also, their claim that it's "Examined and Registered by the KMRB" is pure fluff. From what I can find the KMRB functions much like the MPAA does here in America, they issue ratings similar to our G, PG, etc system. They have nothing to do with verifying the proper copyright copyright compliance. Their claim that the movie is KMRB registered is likely valid. Unfortunately the movie's KMRB rating has nothing to do the with legitimacy of the media it's being encoded to. All that to say that the movie's KMRB registration has nothing to do with the validity of the DVD product. It just means the KMRB has determined a rating for the movie, not the DVD.
Brad
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Hmmm. Well this is all very interesting. I had looked at the packaging, and I thought it was domestically produced for the South Korean market. It offers Korean subtitles as well, which I would not expect someone to go to that trouble for a pirated version. The sellers have great ratings, too.
I got some pretty dang high quality pirated video on my last sand box trip. The overseas pirates can often be pretty dang tech savy. Of course some or an iPhone video in a theatre too.
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When I was in Phuket there was some quality pirated DVDs.
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When I was in Phuket there was some quality pirated DVDs.
How do you pronounce that ??? ;) ;/ =D
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Hmmm. It offers Korean subtitles as well, which I would not expect someone to go to that trouble for a pirated version. The sellers have great ratings, too.
I can burn a dvd with subtitles from nearly every language available and it would add about 30 extra minutes to just go find the subtitle tracks.
That is not an indication of a higher quality product.
FWIW
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Also, I think I am looking at the import disc you were seeing on ebay. Something about it is sending up all the red flags. I can't exactly say why, but this one seems to fall under the "If it looks to good to be true it probably is" rule.
Brad
I thought it had to do with different prices being charged for the same item in different foreign markets. The example I am most familiar with in healthcare has to do with drug prices. It is not at all unusual for Drug A sold in the USA for $ 50 to be sold in France for $ 15. The exact same drug manufactured in USA plants and shipped to France. But due to different regulatory and pricing rules, usually as a requirement of the foreign government, available for much cheaper.
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The region coding is a licensing and content issue. It's for controlling region-specific release dates, for issuing versions of the film edited to comply with a particular region's ethics guidelines, or as a way to get the proper PAL/NTSC formatting to the correct markets. The pricing is a function of demand in that region's particular market and the vagaries of any taxes, tariffs, or agreements with the powers that be in those markets.
Quality bootleg stuff has become an even more tremendous-er headache since studios began using overseas facilities to press the disks. They ship the data to an overseas production facility that presses the DVDs, shipping the finished product back to the studios in the US. Unfortunately some of these production facilities have a little trouble maintaining decent security on their customer's products, giving less than scrupulous individuals/groups a HUGE opportunity to get their hands on studio-direct source material. Once they have the coding they can make as many disks as they please, and very high quality ones as they are using the studio coding to master their products. They can also conveniently sidestep that pesky problem of copyright compliance and remittance of royalties. China is the main offender as their govt likes the millions of foreign dollars it brings into their economy. As a result they tend to turn a blind eye to the practice until it becomes politically advantagous for them to take corrective action.
Brad
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How do you pronounce that ??? ;) ;/ =D
Like Fooket. But by the way the people selling their crap say it you would think otherwise :lol: pretty sure they are saying it like that on purpose."Hey bro", fist bump, "You want a Phuket suit?" "For the last time I'm not you're bro!" :lol: