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Psst! Eight Bits Gets You "The Two Towers" In China

Posted by timothy on from the just-glad-it-opens-on-my-birthday dept.

rocodipoco writes "CNN reports on this article about DVDs of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" were available in Shanghai two weeks ago for about $1 a pop, according to one Western film industry executive who visited that city. The film opens in North America on December 18. Interviewed at the CineAsia movie convention, the executive said as many as 40 street vendors were openly offering DVDs outside a Shanghai mall; he declined their offers, and thus can't verify the quality of the counterfeit copies. I personally want to wait for the movie to hit the big screen...it's all about the suspense. What do others think?"

3 of 561 comments (clear)

  1. Speaking from experience... by Leto-II · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've seen a few copies of LoTR 2 here in China. Sort of. All the DVD/VCD copies I've seen here so far have been labelled quite well. Pretty box art and everything. But when you put in the disc it turns out to be a completely different movie. Not sure which movie it was as I didn't watch long enough to be sure, but it's some old fantasy flick from the 70's. AFAIK they don't have a real copy of LoTR 2 yet in China.

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    Do not anger the worm.
  2. Re:Lies by PjotrP · · Score: 5, Informative
    look if this story was true we would find copies of it on the net. Have you guys any idea how much prestige releasing this movie on the net would give to any movie release (pirate) groups?

    In the scene of pirating movies everything is a prestige thing. Its about releasing the best quality movies before another group does it. The scene even has rules, though not as strict as the game-pirating scene. Anyway any group releasing this movie this early would get mucho kudoos or whatever those punks think they can measure their success as a pirate group with.

    Any of the most succesfull groups have loads of contacts in Asia as things just are easier to get in asia, with more cinema-owners not caring about "lending" the screener-dvd to somebody for a night, and with all the anime or whatever kind of movies that are released there before the US. The dvd-rip would most probably hit the internet even before the streetvendors have it. so since there are no dvdrips on the internet there very probably is no dvd for sale in asia... so this is instead just that lil bit more attention and part of the media hyping of the movie...

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    PjotrP
  3. Re:LotR... by Fweeky · · Score: 5, Informative
    SVCD rips are usually approximately 300 x 200.

    Er, if it's SVCD it's 480 x 576 PAL or 480 x 480 NTSC. Otherwise it's not an SVCD, it's just a random MPEG-2 stream burnt with the SVCD format.

    A good SVCD will blow up just fine, especially on a TV.

    Don't mistake TeleSync VCD's for DVDrip SVCD's. Just like there's plenty of crappy, low resolution, poorly encoded DivX's, the same can be said for SVCD.