US Disney DVD’s ship without Disney Hologram, quality lower than UK.

I was tipped off by a friend in the import DVD business the other day that many genuine US Disney DVDs are now shipping with no disney hologram, I found this incredible, after all in the UK Disney are going to extraordinary lengths to make it easy to tell a Region 2 distribution from a copy.

I ordered a couple of Disney movies direct from Amazon USA (not from a dodgy seller listing on Amazon, but from Amazon proper and shipped from Amazon’s own warehouse), and the pictures here show what turned up, to say I’m shocked is something of an understatement.

• There is absolutely no hologram of any description anywhere.
• The cheap and nasty black plastic box is terrible.
• The printing on the cover, though shiny and nice from a distance has blurred writing on the back.
• The printing on the DVD itself is a cheap screen print that looks awful.
• The disc is very poor quality, and it’s see through in places. ( see video here )

In addition to all that, it won’t play on my Panasonic DVR machine, due to over zealous copy protection. It plays OK on both my Sony Region 1 player and my Philips Multi Region player though.

This is a totally genuine Disney DVD, and that makes it all the more amazing.

Some more images below, click the images to get a bigger image!

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.