Forum - View topicHong Kong import DVDs?
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Ogami Itto
Posts: 47 |
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I just read another topic about sum guy who bought the Cowboy Bebop movie imported from Hong Kong... Whats wrong with Hong Kong DVDs? I have Spriggan on DVD from Hong Kong.. perfect apart from funny sound.
And i've just ordered Evangelion DVDs as well. I live in the Uk and we never get any of the good stuff over here apart from mainstream Manga releases and sales on E Bay from Hong Kong are a lot cheaper on delivery than from US. |
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Ataru
 Posts: 2329 Location: Missouri (Strikeman) |
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My view on it is that fact someone wants to jump the gun and translate a movie or series before it released in the States, those making a profit. The one that are released tend to look and sound better, and have extras. |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Nothing is wrong with Hong Kong DVDs as long as 1) They're legit 2) The soudn quality is up to spec 3) the video quality is up to spec. As you said, your DVD sounded funny, so that's what was wrong with the DVD, why ask a question that you're going to answer yourself? But the serious problem with HK DVDs is that theere is a very significant number of illegal, unlicenced DVD coming out of Asia (not necessarrilly Hong Kong) and it is very hard to know whether or not a particular example is legit. One good way to tell whether or not a copy is legit or not is the price... if it's very cheap it's probably a bootleg. |
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Ramza
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 36 Location: Michigan |
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Like Tempest said, many HK DVD's are illegal. Infact, the vast majority of them are. Very few titles were released legally and unless you know specificly where to look for these few legal DVD's, the HK DVD's you do come across will almost always be illegal.
Other than that... what else is wrong with them? Many titles have a variety of problems such as horrible subtitles, bad video/audio quality, missing episodes, and various others things wrong. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15613 |
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Films made in Hong Kong and released on dvd are legal if they're from Tai Seng, Media Asia, or Universe. As for anime, the only legal HK dvd's are the region 3 ones. Same goes with Japanese movies in general. That's how you can tell your import Miyazaki collection wasn't pirated.
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Ogami Itto
Posts: 47 |
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AAAh. oh dear i've just ordered sum illegal region 0 DVDs then... oh well.
I've had bad experience ordering Anime Video CDs from Singapore in the past... decent sound and picture quality but they must have had about 30 minutes of footage cut out of them in total... Hahaha guess in Singapore they don't like Nudity much. thanks for the info! |
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Ole Goatweed
Posts: 9 |
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Considering that in Singapore, it's against the local laws to toss chewed gum onto the streets or that they still believe in caning people, I can wholly imagine that they'd have some sort of problem with nudity in general.
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Actually, it's illegal to toss chewed bubblegum on the street pretty much everywhere in the first world, including all major US cities, it's called littering. In Singapore it is illegal to chew bubblegum. period. And they also happen to enforce their no-littering laws. As for canning, hey any country that canes an American teenager (or any foreign teenager for that matter, it just happens that Americans have a reputation of "When on Rome, do as at home") who is to0 presumpteous to learn the local laws before visiting is in my good books 
On to the topic at hand... Yeah, I'm not very surprised that Singapore has strict censorship rules. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Actually, that's not true, as Gatsu said there are several legit DVD distributors in Hong Kong. The last thing people should think is that there are no, or few legit DVDs in HK, Singapore, China or Thailand. This includes Anime, there are many anime titles that have been legitimately licenced and released in those places. What people should understand is that the DVDs that are availabel from those places with outrageously low prices are probably bootlegs. In addition to being illegal and bad for the Industry and despite the super low price, you don't get your Money's worth from those DVDs as they are often 1) Badly trasnlated 2) Low video quality (A DVD made from a VHS or VCD master) 3) Hard subbed (a DVD ripped from an LD) and have low sound quality (for the same reasons). You get what you pay for, whether it's computer equipment, housing, or Anime DVDs. |
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KawaiiSylphiel
Posts: 3 |
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You win some, you lose some. I admit I have a few series from Hong Kong
 Inu Yasha, Flame of Reeca, Excel Saga. Region zero. But still.... I'm watching what I want to see without having to wait forever to see which American Corporation is going to buy rights and sit on them forever. Let's see... ADV has had rights to Excel Saga for-bloody-ever. I've not heard of anyone snatching up Flame of Reeca which is a most excellent series... one of my faves. And then of course Viz has rights to Inu Yasha. ADV and Viz are both awesome companies.... but they're too concerned with lining their own pockets. They'll stretch out a series that they know will sell on forever. They'll throw a mere 3 episodes to one DVD and sell it for $30... honestly, that's $10 an episode. So while the DVDs I have may be illegal.... I'm still sleeping well knowing that one, I'm not waiting forever... and two that I'm not lining the pockets of big business people.
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Vicious
 Posts: 97 |
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I will agree that company's charge way to much for anime, and I'll also admit to seeing all three of those series fansubed, but...a person shouldn't try to justify things like that with 'well it's just a big evil company so it doesn't matter' For one theft is theft and for another bootleggers are alot more concerned about lining their pockets then ADV and viz. There's so many eps I'm probably not going to buy Inuyasha, but I'm not going to say the company that localizes it is responsible for my theft. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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I think there's a difference between saying "this is alright because..." and "this doesn't bother me because..." Given my undestanding of KawaiiSylphiel's post she(?) wasn't saying that she felt what she was doing wasn't wrong, but rather that she wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I won't defend her position, bootlegs are bootlegs and they are wrong, but at least she isn't trying to defend her position with some crap about how she shouldn't have to pay for art & entertainment. |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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About a week after my 18th birthday (last Thursday), my sister's birthday present arrived in the mail. It was in a shoddy, broken-down box from China.
So I open the sucker up, and what do I get? A bootlegged DVD containing Grave of the Fireflies and Kiki's Delivery Service! Now, it's not really my sister's fault here - she knows I like this anime stuff, and aside from the scant few things I made her sit down and watch before she married and moved away (i.e., Otomo's Memories and a few Ghibli films), she hardly knows anything about it. I gave her a ring about it, and she simply thought she was buying a 100% legit, supah-cheap DVD from some dude offa eBay. Not wanting to be a jerk, though, I told her the present was fine. I got around to watching the disc last night - the sound and video quality were quite good, actually. You can tell they used the Japanese LDs as their source. The subtitles, though - woo. That's something else. Everything was at least one to two seconds off, there were constant misspellings, and many lines of dialogue simply weren't translated at all. Near the end of Grave of the Fireflies, were Setsuko is dying and tries to hand her brother some food she made out of dirt, the entire scene was completely ruined by wierd, out-of-context, and wholly inappropriate subtitles ("PROTECT YOU!!!"). In other words, bootlegs are pretty bad, and you should tell people not to shop for anime DVDs on eBay. I know people do sell legit DVDs on eBay, but my family is too blinded by the supah-low prices on the bootlegs to really care. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4555 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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One needs not make blanket statments about buying anime DVDs (or CDs) on eBay. There's a simple, but highly efficient, trick to avoid having bootlegs come up in one's eBay searches, a trick that I posted in another thread, but a trick which bears repeating:
All I can really add is that if they don't mention the name of the company and/or the legit catalogue number in the text of the description, assume it's a bootleg. If you're looking specifically for a CD and that information is not found in the body of the text, yet the picture of the CD case clearly shows the legit company logo (i.e. not SM or Ever Anime), be wary, because frequently the sellers will just lift the images from the legit CD cover scans at places like AnimeNation, because they're too lasy to make their own scans. |
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Prophane33
Posts: 2 Location: Ft.Lauderdale/Tokyo |
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 If you've ever shopped IN HK you would know that finding a legit dvd is as common as finding a gold mine in your bathroom. Yes, there are legit HK Dvds available online from sources such as www.dvdasian.com and www.hkflix.com they do a good job of weeding out the bootlegs. Another place I recommend is www.dddhouse.com (their prices are in HK dollars, and they are VERY dependable and good company)
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