How to Spot a Bootleg

[Medieval]

Worst part is the guy selling them has people leaving him feedback saying stuff like "Great H.K. DVDs! Better than paying for the U.S. Release!" So it's blatantly obvious he's selling bootlegs and people are even INTENTIONALLY buying them, whats up with that.

If people are willing to buy, there will always be someone who is more than willing to sell it to them.

I've been lucky enough not to get burned on the DVD portion of bootlegging. I did get burned on a few sound tracks, before I learned more about bootlegging though. Didn't even realize until months later I had bought a bootleg CD.

Ah, well learned my lesson from that one.

[Scintilla]

Worst part is the guy selling them has people leaving him feedback saying stuff like "Great H.K. DVDs! Better than paying for the U.S. Release!" So it's blatantly obvious he's selling bootlegs and people are even INTENTIONALLY buying them, whats up with that.

They probably don't realize they're illegal.

[Bardiel13]

I'm a tad too lazy too peruse through ever post, so I'm going to ask this question, reguardless if someone posted it earlier: If a DVD box set is factory sealed, can it still be a bootleg?
Cause I ordered Excel Saga on DVD, and it look about the same price that you can find on discount dvd websites (About Sixty dollars). It hasn't arrived yet, but one guy out of the zillions that gave him the thumbs up said that he received a bootleg. So... if it's factory sealed, am I still at risk of being scammed?

[Evangelion Unit 01]

I'm a tad too lazy too peruse through ever post, so I'm going to ask this question, reguardless if someone posted it earlier: If a DVD box set is factory sealed, can it still be a bootleg?
Cause I ordered Excel Saga on DVD, and it look about the same price that you can find on discount dvd websites (About Sixty dollars). It hasn't arrived yet, but one guy out of the zillions that gave him the thumbs up said that he received a bootleg. So... if it's factory sealed, am I still at risk of being scammed?

Well, think just by judging from the price it is okay. I bought excel saga from from best buy store for $67.99, so if what you bought was only sisty or so, it is proabably fine. Now all you have to do is look at the small print. Is it a three disk box set? Because if it is then you just payed full price for a boot, which really sucks. But if it is six disks you are okay, and also most boots range from 20-30 dollars a series not sixty, so I think you are okay. Here is a link to best buy's excel saga incase you want to compare. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... pe=product

[Bardiel13]

Whew! Thanks, man.

[CSmith_Fan]

well...for a brief moment, new guy here has to play devil's advocate because of the young 'uns here..but back in the late 80s and early 90s, in some places of the US, yes, you could find bootlegs of anime at Sci Fi Cons in "anime rooms", and even though we knew they were bootlegs, no one said anything because back then, it was rare to find a store that had even a 5yr old subed show of any type that was anime, and if you did, you paid about 2-3x as much as we do now for the DVDs because they had to 'special order' them blah blah blah...

...then came DVDs and net shopping and you can find legit vids anywhere.

Now granted I dont approve of bootlegs, but just saying that back then, sometimes it was all people had to satisfy their addiction.

times hav changed...

oh and a sure fire way to know it's a bootleg is when they only accept cash and their "store" is out of the trunk of a 76 Pinto...

seriously though, one sign, at least with VHS, is if the voices dont seem quite right...more than likely, they redubbed it because of crappy sound quality or someone coughing in the theater or whatever. Saw a few like that in my days (like finding out after I bought the legit version and going "That doesnt sound like the person I heard 2 years ago...Hrm..."

[Evangelion Unit 01]

One other thing I wanted to add about boots I remember from a while ago. I borrowed my friends copy of lain to compare it to mine. His was a boot, but he doesn't really care about such things, mine was real. I put the real one in my computer and the fact in my dvd player. I paused it at one point and noticed that the picture of the fake had been blown up. It looked a lot bigger than the real one, plus since that was the case all four sides where cut out of the picture. like they too extra effort to format the dvds to fit the screen. One other thing, extras where missing, and I mean almost all of them. The only thing they had where ending and opening textless credits. One other thing was that the color was off. The real lain had darker brown hair color, and the fake had had lighter hair color. At one point when I stopped the DVD I noticed that there was some green on lain's face. The side of it anyway, I acctually didn't notice it at first until I gave my brothers a test and asked them both if they could see which is the real one. My 16 year old brother picked out the fake right away because he saw green on the face of lain. I couldn't tell much about sound quality, but there was certainly a differnece in the picture qaulity. I guess this is something to consider for those who do buy boots.

[SS5_Majin_Bebi]

One other thing I wanted to add about boots I remember from a while ago. I borrowed my friends copy of lain to compare it to mine. His was a boot, but he doesn't really care about such things, mine was real. I put the real one in my computer and the fact in my dvd player. I paused it at one point and noticed that the picture of the fake had been blown up. It looked a lot bigger than the real one, plus since that was the case all four sides where cut out of the picture. like they too extra effort to format the dvds to fit the screen. One other thing, extras where missing, and I mean almost all of them. The only thing they had where ending and opening textless credits. One other thing was that the color was off. The real lain had darker brown hair color, and the fake had had lighter hair color. At one point when I stopped the DVD I noticed that there was some green on lain's face. The side of it anyway, I acctually didn't notice it at first until I gave my brothers a test and asked them both if they could see which is the real one. My 16 year old brother picked out the fake right away because he saw green on the face of lain. I couldn't tell much about sound quality, but there was certainly a differnece in the picture qaulity. I guess this is something to consider for those who do buy boots.

Actually, the majority of the issues you mention here are caused by the fact that a PC MONITOR DISPLAYS COLOUR DIFFERENTLY. And also there is no such thing as overscan on a PC monitor.

I thought you knew this.

[Evangelion Unit 01]

One other thing I wanted to add about boots I remember from a while ago. I borrowed my friends copy of lain to compare it to mine. His was a boot, but he doesn't really care about such things, mine was real. I put the real one in my computer and the fact in my dvd player. I paused it at one point and noticed that the picture of the fake had been blown up. It looked a lot bigger than the real one, plus since that was the case all four sides where cut out of the picture. like they too extra effort to format the dvds to fit the screen. One other thing, extras where missing, and I mean almost all of them. The only thing they had where ending and opening textless credits. One other thing was that the color was off. The real lain had darker brown hair color, and the fake had had lighter hair color. At one point when I stopped the DVD I noticed that there was some green on lain's face. The side of it anyway, I acctually didn't notice it at first until I gave my brothers a test and asked them both if they could see which is the real one. My 16 year old brother picked out the fake right away because he saw green on the face of lain. I couldn't tell much about sound quality, but there was certainly a differnece in the picture qaulity. I guess this is something to consider for those who do buy boots.

Actually, the majority of the issues you mention here are caused by the fact that a PC MONITOR DISPLAYS COLOUR DIFFERENTLY. And also there is no such thing as overscan on a PC monitor.

I thought you knew this.

Well I did not know about the colors, but something like that would not suprise me. however even if it is the PC the color still looked fuller and the picture on the TV screen looked like the edges of it where cut. it was just something I notice when comparing. Regaurdless the boot still had that green on the face, which is really bad.

And also there is no such thing as overscan on a PC monitor

does that mean there is on the dvd player? Maybe I should compare them on two dvd players or computers.

I thought you knew this.

Sorry, I only know stuff from my experiences.

On one side not I think the boot was a little cut to. In the into of the real series at the very beginnning of it you see Lain. In the boot, which is by FX by the way, did not show lains face. It showed the part with the snow and everything, but it was shorter and there was no lain's face. On the real one there was lain's face that part of the intro was longer, and this was the same for both my computer and dvd player.

[Scintilla]

Simply put:

TV sets cut off the edges of the picture.
Computer monitors do not.