Page 1 of a word of warning

My bro has just got a copy of Boondock Saints, from a UK based online retailer for £18. he has used this company many times and has never had a problem, untill now. I am not going to name them, because I have not yet heard there side of the story and could well be as much a victim as my bro.

On reciveing the disc my bro noticed that the extras listed on the web site were not encluded on the disc recived. He sent them an email asking about this, and got a reply that said there had been an error on there web site and the disc he has is correct and no other is available.

A few days later he lends me the disc. I was not there when he droped it off, but as soon as I got my hands on it some thing did not feel quite right.

The production of the disk felt very cheap, the printing of the disc was very poor. Putting the disk in the player i noticed some thing else that was wrong, the box says that the ratio is 1.85:1, but it was playing back as 2.35:1, it was also none anamorphic.

so came to the net and did a little research and the disc was all wrong.

so I put the disc in my pc and discover that the disc is only single layer, were as it should be dual. on taking the disc out of my PC and having a good look at it under bright light, I see the word BLANK writen on the top of it!!!

So it looks to me as though this company is passing off DVDR`s as the real deal!

Now this is from a big uk online retailer, that carries the the Which Web Trader logo on the home page!

He is going to ring them in the morning to see what they say, I for one would like to know what they say.

So go check your disc. You dont know what you might find.

TC.

This item was edited on Thursday, 17th January 2002, 00:07

Hopefully you can clarify matters with the retailer tomorrow, but just to make one thing clear, the BLANK designation *does not* mean the disc is a DVD-R. Basically, many single-sided, single-layer DVDs are actually manufactured as double-sided discs, one side of which is literally blank and has a label screen-printed onto it. The data layer of this dummy side usually carries the word "BLANK" in the hub area.

Poor printing is often the hallmark of a counterfeit DVD, but then again some legitimate releases are not exactly state of the art in this respect. Just to make sure, can you check the region coding of the disc in your PC? If it is anything other than "all regions"/"region 0", then there`s absolutely no way on earth that this can be a pirate.

It *sounds* to me like your brother intended to buy the (as yet unavailable) US R1 version of Boondock Saints, but instead has been palmed off with the inferior R1 Canadian release (which isn`t anamorphic, and has no extras). That in itself should be cause for complaint, without the need to accuse the company of Jolly Roger activity ;-)

Mike

"the BLANK designation *does not* mean the disc is a DVD-R. Basically, many single-sided, single-layer DVDs are actually manufactured as double-sided discs, one side of which is literally blank and has a label screen-printed onto it. The data layer of this dummy side usually carries the word "BLANK" in the hub area"

How common is this? Just checked about 20 of my collection, didnt see it once.

"Just to make sure, can you check the region coding of the disc in your PC? If it is anything other than "all regions"/"region 0"."

well just checked Power DVD and it is set to region 2, I can not say for a fact, but I dont think I have changed the region on power DVD.

This item was edited on Thursday, 17th January 2002, 02:17

Run DVD Genie and scan the disc to see what regions its set to. As stated by Mike G, there is practically no way this can be a pirate copy and still be region encoded.