It's not surprising this has happened. Original CDs, DVDs, games and other media are very expensive in places like Thailand, China, Hong Kong etc. especially in relation to people's salaries. Imagine if a disk cost $150 and you get the idea why piracy is so rife over there.
I doubt the pirates will bother doing legitimate blu ray copies for some time when the recordable media is expensive and things like ROM mark deter mass duplication. They'll just put HD content out on a DVD as AVCHD or BD-5 or BD-9. Or pretend its HD when it's just upscaled DVD. Or it will be an HD movie shot from the back of a cinema. Anything released before the appearance of a retail DVD / BD release is likely to be the latter.
Asian governments don't seem to care about piracy. They conduct raids of course but they're as effective as prohibition booze raids which is to say not at all. The only way piracy will diminish is when the original content owners realise they cannot charge western prices to people on 1/4 the salary. They have to make their content affordable which means lowering prices. Even if that means selling them in plastic sleeves with minimal features and a localized soundtrack to prevent copies leaking into other regions.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DrXym @ Nov 17th 2008 6:43AM
It's not surprising this has happened. Original CDs, DVDs, games and other media are very expensive in places like Thailand, China, Hong Kong etc. especially in relation to people's salaries. Imagine if a disk cost $150 and you get the idea why piracy is so rife over there.
I doubt the pirates will bother doing legitimate blu ray copies for some time when the recordable media is expensive and things like ROM mark deter mass duplication. They'll just put HD content out on a DVD as AVCHD or BD-5 or BD-9. Or pretend its HD when it's just upscaled DVD. Or it will be an HD movie shot from the back of a cinema. Anything released before the appearance of a retail DVD / BD release is likely to be the latter.
Asian governments don't seem to care about piracy. They conduct raids of course but they're as effective as prohibition booze raids which is to say not at all. The only way piracy will diminish is when the original content owners realise they cannot charge western prices to people on 1/4 the salary. They have to make their content affordable which means lowering prices. Even if that means selling them in plastic sleeves with minimal features and a localized soundtrack to prevent copies leaking into other regions.