Bootleg Blu-rays and DVDs

[Brent_Reid]

After reading hundreds of books, articles, reviews and heated forum threads (in five languages) over the years, I've written a comprehensive article on the subject of bootleg and pirate discs:

http://www.brentonfilm.com/articles/beware-of-pirates-how-to-avoid-bootleg-blu-rays-and-dvds

I think you'll all be as amazed as I was at just how thriving and widespread this practice is today, even in the US and Europe, where they're being sold openly via supposedly respected outlets like eBay and Amazon.

Any further info or examples of rip-off labels will be gratefully received and incorporated into the article.

[Samuel_Scott]

The biggest issue is that some of these companies skirt the grey area, and release some public domain as well as boots. Llamentol shifts in between legal and illegal releases AFAIK and Suevia I believe has released some licensed discs. One problem is that they have managed to get Amazon etc to sell their releases so it is extremely hard to determine. Twilight Time helped us out (as did Sony) with determining Resen releases, all of which have been removed from the database now.

Some US grey market companies are the likes of Televista, Jef Films, Cheezy Flicks. Some UK grey companies include 21st Century and Ag Plate. They tend to be PD releases, but there are some occasional ones where it is just near impossible to be 100% sure.

As I said over e-mails Brent, it is another fine piece on a great website.

[Brent_Reid]

I've checked out all the labels you listed and apart from Ag Plate, they're mostly issuing PD titles with some, as you say, looking quite suspect. While the overall principle is the same, at least they're not doing anything as blatant, in terms of counterfeiting recent restorations and releases, as the Euro labels in the article.

Ag Plate only have a handful of releases and around half of those are Laurel and Hardy films. While the films themselves are PD, there's a chance they could have lifted the transfers from Universal's UK DVDs. Some of those L&H titles can currently be had for 1p + £1.26 postage; if anyone who has the L&H DVD box set (http://amzn.to/1XDsHRh) wants to pick one up and do a comparison, I'd love to hear the result!

The Spanish Manga Films DVD in The African Queen comparison is definitely a pirate. I suppose knowing what we do now, it's worthwhile suspecting most of the Spanish discs on DVDC and many of the Italian ones.
I’m 100% positive that all of Manga’s product is pirated, as with any other front label distributed by Vértice Cine. A Google search of this site shows you’ve currently got 190 MF DVDs listed: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:dvdcompare.net+%22manga+films%22+spain

Of course it’s a simple job to do a similar search for all the other labels I’ve listed so far. Weeding them out or at least flagging them up with some sort of caveat would be a helluva job – but a very worthy one!

[Tim_Rogerson]

There are a number of Spanish DVDs in circulation (sold on Amazon etc) of Hammer films which appear to be copies of legitimate German or Australian releases. It is also interesting that some Spanish DVDs seem to be NTSC ports rather than Pal (eg the Spanish release of Chato's Land which is the US 'PG' version unlike the rest of Europe which has the International version). I'd be quite sceptical of any non-major studio Spanish release unless I'd read a review on Amazon.

[Brent_Reid]

Since first publishing my article, linked in the OP, I've been contacted by many parties on both sides of the issue so have now updated it accordingly. As well as receiving a lot more testimony from those whose work has been pirated I've had several threats from the pirates themselves. I've added some of these emails to to the article to further show what a bunch of crooks and gangsters we're dealing with...

Hi Tim, of the Spanish DVDs you mention, have you come across any labels I haven't yet listed that I can potentially add?