DVDs in China -- an Update
 

Not sure if this is the best forum for this, but here goes . . .

China has been, of course, legendary for the ready availability of pirated DVDs. These DVDs varied in quality from high-quality glass-mastered disks to the poorest transfers from someone's camcorder taken into a movie theater. Pirated DVDs have also been the bane of the Hollywood studios.

Well, Hollywood finally got smart. On this latest trip, I didn't see pirated DVDs in the usual locations (though, I suspect they're still available at the tourist-oriented "fake" markets). Instead, I saw genuine DVDs produced specifically for the Chinese market. These genuine DVDs sell for around $5-6 USD, as opposed to the $1-3 that was customary for the pirated product. Though genuine, they do differ from the U.S. DVD releases in that (1) they lack special features, (2) they contain a rather lengthy propaganda/advertisement for genuine DVDs at the beginning, and (3) though they contain the English language soundtrack, they have Chinese subtitles that can't be turned off, and English title frames (for instance, when you see on the screen, "Three years later . . . ") are replaced with Chinese ones. I realized this after picking up a copy of Zodiac, which I've wanted to see, and watching it on my brother-in-law's home theater in Shenzhen. The final titles of the movie lay out what happened to all the major players and were, of course, in Chinese. I had to go on the internet to look up what happened. Also, needless to say, these DVDs are region coded to Region 6 (the U.S. and Canada is Region 1) and can only be played on Region 6 players.

The net result is to make these DVDs singularly unattractive to foreign buyers looking to score cheap DVDs to take home, but very attractive to Chinese buyers who can get a Chinese-customized, studio-quality original for just a few dollars more than a pirated DVD.

Hollywood studios, I salute you for an intelligent solution to a nagging problem.

Now, here's what I did. I went to a Shenzhen department store and bought a Region 6 DVD player that will (1) work on 120/240v 50/60 Hz, and (2) convert internally between PAL and NTSC. The player, a Phillips, cost $70. Then I bought a bunch of DVDs that I wanted to see. My wife will translate the Chinese titles for me, and I don't mind at all the loss of the special features. Best of all, bringing home these DVDs is completely legal -- they are genuine, not counterfeit, and therefore legal to bring in (resale is a different story but, of course, I have no intention of doing that).

So, it looks like a win-win-win situation -- Hollywood sells more movies in China, albeit it a lower margin than in the U.S. Chinese DVD buyers get a higher quality product. And we-who-like-a-bargain-when-visiting-China have a legal means of obtaining low-cost DVDs.

This is definitely a step in the good direction. But having many Chinese friends, I know that they still purchase the pirated DVD versions that can be found for 10 yuan or less (or download them via bittorrent for even cheaper).

The issue of pirated DVDs will not go away until the Chinese government decides to care about copyright laws, which from what I can perceive will not occur anytime soon. :(

most Chinese cannot afford $6 for a DVD,
under the table is the copy of the $6 "legit" DVD being sold for $1 or so

Rally

Of course you can always download the movie for free, DVD quality, sometimes before it is in theaters.

Now, if the studios would get smart and do something similar for the US market there would be less demand on the Chinese knock-offs. But I never thought the studios were smart enough to do that, so far I have not been disappointed on their lack of intelligence.

That's ridiculous. Any Chinese with a DVD player and a television can afford 30-35 RMB for a genuine DVD.

I used to date an FA who'd come back from China/HK with (decent-looking, non-videocamera) DVDs that were available simultaneously with first-run US cinema releases. I don't think this solution can help here.

I know plenty of places just up the road from SZX that sells both quality of DVD. Most for around 10-12 RMB.

sorry I think you are wrong , for them a TV with DVD is a long term invertment ,

and paying $1 instead of $6 to watch a DVD one or 2 times is a lot of money to save for most Chinese,

you are not going to stop copy DVds by price alone , it needs to be a society thing where you are considered "bad" if you buy a bootleg item ,

I doubt thats going to happen soon in most poor asian countries,

Rally

That's complete nonsense. Have you even been to China? I'm there right now, in Yunnan province, which is a rural area, not at all like the major cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen. Plenty of televisions and DVD players here (and satellite dishes on many of the farm houses).

No, it is not.

I'm not going to turn this into a thread about copyright protection in China. Do an FT search on my screen name -- this topic has been exhausted.

China isn't a poor country.

I'm afraid that rally is somewhat right, most Chinese still can't afford that paying 30-35 RMB for a disk on a regular basis. There is however a large group of "middle class" consumers in the cities that could afford it, but will still continue to buy the pirated versions for 6 to 15 RMB per disk. Very few people see the value of having a legal version, this isn't a "status" purchase, and if you are buying a lot of discs, 20+ rmb in savings per disk adds up.

Think about it - why would you make a trip to some big box chain to buy dvd's when you can just grab a perfectly good copy of the latest hollywood blockbuster for under 10 rmb on the street on your commute home from work.

Even if you want to buy a legal copy, it is often hard to find locations that have them and there is less selection, since not all studios are running this type of program. I think that if the studios really want to compete with the fakes, they need to charge 20 RMB per disk, increase the amount of retail presence and all studios need to participate.

And as always, the pirated disks are still available everywhere, even in BJ and Shanghai.

this has been around for quite a while.

the movies are around 30to 60 rmb and are legit and legal.

while they are region 6 locked, you can easily by a region unlocked player, so that shouldn't really matter.

the dvds do have special features, but may be not as many as many as the ones in europe and the US.

the menus are all in chinese, which is a major pain!

btw you can still easily get the pirated dvds, was in sz last weekend, and trust me, they are still there. however hk customs are getting stricter on stopping people.

Out of curiosity, where did you see the pirated DVDs? They were "underground" at the fakes market, i.e. touts were offering them. I didn't see them in the usual stores in SZ.

I'm not sure what Hollywood has to do with it but I'm in asia about every other month and I just got back from Korea, China, Manila and Thailand and all the places I know of for pirated DVD's are still out there and going strong. And I checked in all four countries and didn't have to look hard at all. Every market and every corner had them all over the place so I not see anything change.

Movies in Mandarin and Thai like you describe have been around for a while and always are cheap (more expensive then pirated but less then US copies) but doesn't seem to halt the traffic of pirated movies.

We see Thai and Indonesian versions of movies around in this part of the world and I don't know if you have ever seen a Thai copy of an American Blockbuster...but the language is English as the original film and the quality just as good, however the English optional subtitles are typed by horribly linguistically challenged Thais who tend to type phonetically with absolutely no knowledge of English and often there will be a gap of several minutes between each typed sentence appearing on screen. Hilarious.

UH, yeah, just a few (hundred... ok ok thousand). Last trip, had quite a few Korean TV shows, some Chinese movies with english subtitles, some US movies out of Thai (better quality I find) and a lot of Pinoy movies. Legal in my country if they pirated or not, no issue to our customs. I average about 200 movies every two months with an inventory of over 6,000 movies in house now. And the thai and chinese and korean suppliers are on my skype and my cell phone speed dial :D