Author Topic: Received "The Wire" (1st season DVD box) in the mailbox but...(NEED HELP) (Read 164 times)

CRAFTY · « **on:** August 14, 2005, 08:34:35 AM »

Since not one store in Belgium has The Wire DVD series, I decided to buy it off eBay. And the guy I bought it from seemed like a good seller, he had great feedback and all of that so I was pretty confident that the DVD box would be "the real deal". Now, this guy is from the UK but he works with a dude in Hong Kong (I later found out via e-mail), and I ended up receving a version from Hong Kong.
Japan & China are known for having a big bootleg market, and I think that's the case with my DVD set too. The front cover looks real and so does the backcover...except for the fact that there are 3 misspellings. And I know that a company like HBO would never allow or release a DVD set with misspellings...
Also, I've seen other pics of the DVD box with a nice lay-out for the discs where you can put them in, and in my version, all 7 discs are just put in a fucking plastic wrapper...that's it.

Luckily, the DVD's play (which wasn't guaranteed, since Hong Kong is Region 6), and the quality seems good and it comes with the menu and all that which makes it seem like a good DVD-copy, but just to be sure and to compare with someone who has the "official" DVD box, I was wondering if anyone could upload just 30 seconds of the first episode in perfect quality (I guess that would be a .m2v file?). I'm just curious to know whether I'm looking at some shitty quality or if it's the way it's supposed to be.

And no, we don't have "The Wire" here on Belgian television, so I can't compare it with that.

Thanks in advance.

BigBDrugStores · « **Reply #1 on:** August 14, 2005, 09:05:38 AM »

ask for your money back

We Fly High · « **Reply #2 on:** August 14, 2005, 12:52:10 PM »

yeah i dont think you got the official version. The HBO sopranos series was also heavily bootlegged. i have two friends that bought soprano box sets, in similar style.. the boxes looked fine, maybe with a couple mispellings, but the inside layout is crappy too like you said with the plastic wrapper . the dvds for the most part played fine, theres only supposed to be four-5 discs in the series, so they put less episodes on each disc. but yeah sometimes the discs froze.. but most of them played fine. there shouldnt really be a problem with the picture quality itself. yeah maybe u can inquire about a refund or something. i dunno. but tahts not the official one.

CRAFTY · « **Reply #3 on:** August 15, 2005, 03:11:52 AM »

I see...yeah like I said, it seems like the quality is good, but just to be sure...I'd like to compare it with a rip of the official version. Would you be able to hook me up with a perfect quality-rip of the first 10/15 seconds? That's all I need to compare...

We Fly High · « **Reply #4 on:** August 15, 2005, 03:13:55 AM »

hrm how do i rip it? im not too sure. anyways have u started watching it. i just finished up season 2 today. great season. almost liked it more than the first one. cant wait till season 3 comes out. but until then we'll have sopranos sixth season in the spring, which will be dope as hell.

CRAFTY · « **Reply #5 on:** August 15, 2005, 04:28:24 AM »

No, I haven't started watching it...I'll wait to do so until our home-theatre system is installed. My parents are re-decorating the entire living-room and they'll install it somewhere at the end of August when all the work/painting is done. Can't wait

And no, I don't know how to rip DVD's

Isn't Windows Media Player capable of ripping DVD's? Anyone else know? Jome?

Now_Im_Not_Banned · « **Reply #6 on:** August 15, 2005, 06:04:21 PM »

I bought a copy of Tech N9ne's "Calm Before The Storm" CD on eBay and thought it was real, but when I played it, the songs had 2 seconds in between them and the cover and CD layout were darker than the original one I had (which I lost)...They made it look really real though...PeACe