counterfeit dvds

[Grakkle]

A friend of mine bought a complete set of the BBC's Robin of Sherwood series (1980s), from a shop in Toronto. The picture quality is horrible, with lots of jerks, stops, and fuzzing.

The sleeves are also extremely poor quality, apparently either photocopied or scanned and then printed on ordinary paper, and the disc printing is of similar (inferior) quality - what you'd get from a cheap inkjet disc printer.

Finally, the discs themselves have more resemblance to a burned dvd-rw than a commercial disc. The burned portion is clearly visible, and the disc colour is purple rather than silver.

I'm 99% sure the discs are counterfeit, but I don't really have any experience with fake discs. If anyone has any better ideas about detecting counterfeit dvds I'd love to hear it.

 

[robbieduncan]

Finally, the discs themselves have more resemblance to a burned dvd-rw than a commercial disc. The burned portion is clearly visible, and the disc colour is purple rather than silver.

They are burnt. No commercially pressed DVD would be purple with a visible burnt portion.

 

[wakerider017]

A friend of mine bought a complete set of the BBC's Robin of Sherwood series (1980s), from a shop in Toronto. The picture quality is horrible, with lots of jerks, stops, and fuzzing.

The sleeves are also extremely poor quality, apparently either photocopied or scanned and then printed on ordinary paper, and the disc printing is of similar (inferior) quality - what you'd get from a cheap inkjet disc printer.

Finally, the discs themselves have more resemblance to a burned dvd-rw than a commercial disc. The burned portion is clearly visible, and the disc colour is purple rather than silver.

I'm 99% sure the discs are counterfeit, but I don't really have any experience with fake discs. If anyone has any better ideas about detecting counterfeit dvds I'd love to hear it.

If the DVD's were copied then what does the lots of jerks, stops, and fuzzing have to do with anything?

The quality usually will not change when you copy a dvd. (unless the original file was larger) Even still it is hardly noticible.

 

[balamw]

It's probably a bad VHS->DVD dub on burned media, which leads to the fuzzy/jerkiness.

B

 

[calculus]

I think you've pretty much got a list of all the telltale signs.

 

[wakerider017]

It's probably a bad VHS->DVD dub on burned media, which leads to the fuzzy/jerkiness.

B

Yup!

 

[Grakkle]

Yeah, it probably is a bad dub. Too bad for her - luckily the guy who sold them gave her a refund without any fuss.

 

[Raid]

A friend of mine bought a complete set of the BBC's Robin of Sherwood series (1980s), from a shop in Toronto.

A friend of mine sells DVD's wholesale and I can talk to him about it if you know the shop the set came from. He doesn't really like the counterfit business as it hurts his bottom line, so I'd bet he'd be interested even though it's not the kind of genre he sells.

In general I only know of two areas in Toronto that sell counterfit DVD's. China town (pretty much all along Spadina from College down to Queen) and the Pacific Mall in Markham. Usually the ones in China town are bad quality, the ones in Pacific mall are better (sleeves and cases can look professional (some even have good Label graphics), but the purple colour is a dead give-away. It's a fake. A few years ago now lots of shops in the Pacific Mall were decended on by cops for selling counterfit goods. I don't know if they are back to their old ways or not... maybe now they're just not as open about it.

 

[SamIchi]

Why did he buy it if it looked like crap. Even the "better" counterfeit don't look legit.