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Answerman - What Do I Do With All These Bootleg DVDs?

Oh, it's a ways off, in the industrial district? I don't go around there much, but I do see a lot of abandoned warehouses.

Maybe they thought you were going to report them, or maybe they were just simply startled that you were able to get into a restricted area. I'm sure these bootleggers, bases of operations are meant for absolutely no one to know about except the people who work there, and they were probably astonished you went as far as to track them down. I would've been interested in how they would've reacted had you tried the replacement DVDs sooner and returned.

Astonished is a good word. The guy was certainly jumpy. Although, I do remember being surprised that I was able to track them down so easily. Pretty sure the door would have been locked if I didn't show up just as someone was leaving.

Once I realized the second set wouldn't play (like the first set), I just wrote it off as a lesson learned. I also don't think I wanted to find out what would have happened if I went back there.

btw, loved your Chubby post. That was hilarious!

The express took a month and I complained to buy.com customer service multiple times, and when I finally got it, it was basically a picture of Sailor Moon in her Super form, a really crappy version of the Sailor Moon US logo and nothing in the back giving info so I knew it was a bootleg.

EyeOfPain wrote:

If you really feel the need to steal content, you might as well just go digital. At least then you aren't funding criminal organizations likely involved in the drug and sex trades.

A lot of these probably come from a time when it wasn't that easy to get digital fansubs. The late 90s and early 00s most people still had dial up. Even the smallest video would take hours to download.

The other here as a few people said, they didn't know. There are a lot of bootlegs that look pretty legit and unless you are the kind of person who pay attention to detail it is really easy to miss.

Today though there isn't much of a reason.

I have bootlegs of four out of five Sailor Moon seasons. They were taken from Japanese remastered DVDs. The buyer promised me that these would be of higher quality than the Pioneer DVDs, and he was right. These DVDs are not only light years ahead of the Pioneer quality, but also the new Viz release. I can pause on the exact cel or sketch I own and get a clear shot of that particular frame. No weird colors, blurring, etc.

This has been the only time where I've bought higher quality bootleg DVDs than the official version. So, while likely uncommon, bootlegs can be of an equal or better quality than the official release.

I have one bootleg set (.hack//SIGN), and I've kept it.

I've seen some obscure anime transferred to streaming video, so odds are that if you chucked all this stuff, you would be able to find it elsewhere if you needed it.