dinky wrote:spudthedestroyer wrote:Anyway, quality is okay, but it looks like they cheaped out and used DVD5s whereas in the us they use DVD9s for some discs. So there's more discs, with less episodes on each disc.
so what do you think? are they actually knock-offs? I honestly don't mind buying dvd5s if they spread it out properly over more discs, but I'm not sure what I think of buying a knock-off.
I really dunno, its not some cheaply packaged knock off. Or rather it comes in a box set. Something weird though, series 2 and 3 has scully and doggart on the disc, and then a big two/three... weird since he doesn't appear to series 8 and 9 )he appears on the cover of them too), probably didn't have the images to use
I think its official, except they really haven't put that much effort in... it is chinese after all, and a western show. No wonder everyone pirates over there
There's a hilarious bit of engrish on the front cover of the boxset:
"The COMPLERE EIGHTH Season"
Yet, in the middle it says 1-9... the guy probably did the reverse maths (they read from right to left, right? 9-1 = 8
)
There's also Korean "subititles" on the discs, and the discs are allegedly Dual-Layer Format, which is a lie. There are special features on some of the discs that you find on western discs.
Only one season i scanned through had chinese or i guess korean softsubs popup automatically, that you need to turn off, and that series didn't have any menus beyond episode select. The rest have no subs on unless you select them so its not intrusive.
There's some episodes where you can tell its a re-encode from a 9 on a TFT, but then i watched some episodes from series 7 and they look quite good/smooth, the picture is of higher quality but they were proper widescreen cameras by that time.
These images are resized by the forum, so right click>view image, they look a lot better in power dvd than they do in the screenshots for some reason (overlay settings and colour profile maybe?), but its close enough:
Series 1 - Sample
lol @ old school scully
Series 5 - Sample
Series 7 - Sample
Purposely Chosen ultra high motion sample from series 6
This last episode has encoding artifacts on the retail R2 too, but not as much. Basically there's a hurricane with people running all over the joint.
The compression noticable in the series 5 one in particular ( I don't know if that will show up on a CRT... you know how they smooth the picture), and the series 6 one. I mean there are retail discs of films like that (series 5). Series 1 and 2 don't look too hot in the R2 dvds, its a dirty 4:3 picture and its pretty much the same quality (i only scanned through the discs).
There was one episode i saw on the disc that was out of sync, so i assume they've just remastered the western version, put in korean subs, and changed the menus round
If its a knockoff, it will be a organised crime knockoff with proper press houses.