Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, Thailand Release.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End just landed on my desk, but this one is a thoroughly genuine release from Pacific Marketing (Thailand), it’s a high quality DVD but the buyer was concerned for three reasons:

1. The buyer complained that there was no hologram on the DVD itself, I’m not entirely sure why the buyer would feel that there should be as very few Disney DVD’s (or any for that matter) have been manufactured with a hologram on the DVD.

2. The buyer was concerned that the Hologram was on the front of the packaging and the text in the back of the hologram says BVHE. The buyer was not justified in this instance as the hologram is quite right to say BVHE as that means “Buena Vista Home Entertainment”, also this distribution does have the hologram on the front of the packaging and there is no problem with that, many other genuine imports also have the hologram on the front bottom left.

3. The buyer thought that the printing on the DVD printed side looked wrong. The printing on the printed side of the DVD is correct, though I appreciate that it can cause confusion where no region is marked on the DVD itself, in this instance the DVD is thoroughly genuine.

It’s also interesting to note that this DVD is copy protected and does not play on many PC’s with DVD software and I have heard that it will not play on some DVD recorder machines, these are getting quite common now in the home and are often used as a primary DVD player, so if you are thinking about buying a DVD recorder you may want to keep a plain old DVD player also.

This costs about 3 UK pounds, or 6 US dollars in Thailand, amazing value in my opinion and it’s a totally genuine and fully licensed Disney DVD.

Counterfeit Disney Box Set 110 DVDs

I just came back from a trip to China and I just could not resist this! It’s an absolute counterfeit though the quailty is amazing. This 110 DVD boxed set has every Disney movie ever made up to about 2006 and it comes in an impressive metal tin.

As is usual with Chinese counterfeit goods, the devil is in the detail. This set includes at least 3 movies which are not Disney at all.

Now some of you will say that I should not be buying stuff that I know is counterfeit, and normally I would not, but I just wanted to see how good this really was. The whole set cost me UK 20 Pounds (40 USD) and the ones that I have watched so far are perfect quality.

I would be interested to know if disney have ever made anything like this for real.

Note to Disney:  This is counterfeit and I’m happy to hand this over to Disney, I have sent a message to that effect to the disney head office and await collection by courier if Disney wish to have this.

Cinderella: Special Edition

More and more classic Disney titles are being produced in Asia these days, and Pacific Marketing have a good selection of genuine DVDs at very attractive prices.

This is on sale in Asia for as little as 3 UK Pounds (6 USD), and it’s a very high quality DVD, it’s marked as Region 3 on the back of the box.

It’s interesting to note that the position of the Disney hologram on these imports is on the front left of the box, and that it’s not exactly placed straight, I’m very aware that many buyers assume that because the hologram is on the front that it’s not genuine, and the fact that it’s a bit crooked does not help convince the skeptical, but like I said this is 100% authentic.

Notice also that the disc itself is fairly plain, it does not have region marked on the disc and there is no hologram on the actual disc.  Whilst some UK versions have a hologram on the disc (but by no means all) it’s unusual to see a genuine disney without a region marked on the DVD, but this seems to be a hallmark of this particular distribution company.

A quick search of the web shows a couple of import DVD sellers to be offering this for around 9.99 UK (19.99 US), which seems like good value to me even if it’s much cheaper in Asia.

Note: The practice of importing Disney titles produced for overseas markets is called “Grey Importing” and is frowned upon by Disney, a friend of mine took one of these into a Disney shop in the UK who said it looked like a counterfeit to them!  They said that because it looks different to the version that they are familiar with, but it’s disturbing that imports are often grouped with counterfeit for no good reason.