icegadgets DVDs - Avoid

[ffutures]

A few days ago I asked about a company called "Icegadgets" which is selling DVDs at about half the usual UK discount prices. What they claim to do is buy direct from far east factories. You get a DVD that's genuine and comes with the real case inserts etc. but not the plastic case and not necessarily manufactured for the UK.

Well, I gave it a try, took ten days to arrive but today I took delivery of the DVD I ordered - the 2007 Transformers movie.

What they sent me was the DVD in a card sleeve, the wrap-around card thing to go around the plastic case, and the insert for the plastic case, with lots of Chinese on the cardboard. It looks professionally made and plays OK but I don't think it's kosher - the Ironman and Transformers trailers don't work, amd it turns out to be all regions and unencrypted, which seems just a little unlikely if it's a legit copy. The sleeve says "one disk special edition" on the front but appears to have info for two disks on the back. Lots of other inconsistencies.

What I think we have here is a factory-made counterfeit - someone has cracked the encryption and I think compressed it to single layer to save on manufacturing costs, run it off via a professional disk duplication factory, and printed a genuine-looking sleeve to go with it.

Now I suppose I need to go warn eBay, who are running their ad, and Google, who handle their payments. Count me somewhat less than impressed.

Comments

[averageshmoe.livejournal.com]

I think you're correct in every aspect. The funny thing about piracy is that most of it is done at the factory level, not the consumer.

I've read several reports that have movies that have not yet been released into the cinemas already being sold on the streets. Apparently employees for studios with access to the films can make a little extra money nowadays.

pgavigan

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

TBH, I would have been surprised if it hadn't been dodgy.

I was sitting in the Railway Tavern on Liverpool St last Saturday, when an Asian girl came to the table and without saying anything showed me a handful of DVD sleeves (didn't recognise the films, though). I just sent her off on her way again.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I probably could have bought that for 5 RMB in China.

One of my nieces bought a lot of pirated DVDs in Beijing last summer. Just over half were in English, the rest in Russian. Of the ones in English, most had the "screener" warning on them, which means they were provided by the studios to someone. (Which I mention because the studios ignore this when they complain about piracy and try to make cracking encryption a worst crime than killing someone.)

People in China do buy legitimate DVDs, but one problem is that most major Hollywood pictures aren't available legitimately, so if they want to watch the movie they have to watch a pirate version. This pretty well guarantees a large market for pirate DVDs. Which guarantees that someone will sell to the market. If the studios were serious about this, they'd make their releases available legally…

[learnedhand-dj.livejournal.com]

Sounds somewhat similar to mp3fiesta.com, which looks legit, except for the fact that its prices are usually US$0.99 per album rather than the more standard US$0.99 or US$0.89 per track. Well, not similar so much in the delivery method, but similar in that if the pricing seems to good to be true, it most likely is. (As for mp3fiesta.com, if the pricing wasn't warning enough, the fact that they are selling Beatles albums when everyone knows that the Beatles haven't authorized their tracks for sale in the MP3 format should make it very clear that the site is not legit. The fact that some of their "album" track listings don't line up with the actual album's tracks means that the site is not only shady, it's not even all that useful.)