Does MakeMKV support CSS-MR discs?

[Sunoo]

Damn, is this something you have witnessed or are you just speculating? Sincere question.

I have personally received bootlegs of a few Warner Archive titles. I reported the sellers, but nothing happened to them and they continue to sell bootlegs on various marketplaces.

[pneumatic]

I have personally received bootlegs of a few Warner Archive titles. I reported the sellers, but nothing happened to them and they continue to sell bootlegs on various marketplaces.

Oh no, maybe that's what I received. How did you determine they were bootlegs tho?

[Sunoo]

The biggest tells were the case artwork was low quality, as if it had been scanned and reprinted, and the label on the disc itself was completely wrong, using cropped art from the case instead of the more boring standard Warner Archive disc label with just the logo and some text.

[pneumatic]

Well I messaged the seller of this expensive copy on eBay and theirs is single layer too, so the image quality can't be better than what I've got (which is poor, indicating bootleg).

Meanwhile there are reviews on Amazon saying the image quality is good...



(which is ironic since the current channel BT DVDrip is definitely better than my DVD copy)



So I guess either:

1. The eBay seller has a bootleg too and doesn't know it, or
2. Warner switched to single layer discs later on in their production to save money

I think (2) is a very real possibility as we've seen a shift in that direction from some of the large DVD publishers as of late. They seem to think DVD people are just silly old people who just want to watch a bit of grainy low quality nostalgia and chuckle at the good old times or something, and therefore the image quality doesn't matter and we can just cram cram cram onto a single layer discs and cut costs.

On the other hand the print quality of the cover is so dull, grainy and looks like it's printed on regular A4 paper (no gloss/shine) that it really does look like a bootleg. Not sure what to think

[pneumatic]

Note the "genuine" on the right has been recompressed (transcoded) to h264 @ 2.5mbps, so the original would look even better.

[dcoke22]

That's a big difference.

I can't imagine a big studio would take the time to remaster something like this down to a smaller file size just save on the costs of single-layer discs vs 2 layer discs. It seems like the costs savings would be small vs. costs to remaster the thing to a worse state.

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Trax-Complete-First-Season/dp/B009P3J69O/142-2649853-3529158

I see Amazon.com (in the USA) has it listed and they're the seller. Seems unlikely Amazon.com would be selling a counterfeit copy, but the listing doesn't list how many layers the discs are. It may not matter anyway, since getting them from Amazon.com might be hard for you.

[pneumatic]

I can't imagine a big studio would take the time to remaster something like this down to a smaller file size just save on the costs of single-layer discs vs 2 layer discs.

Oh, believe me, they do it. Mill Creek is the worst offender by far. They keep getting the publishing rights to all these older shows and they consistently give us low bitrate versions sourced from worse quality masters, and with crap packaging as well. Even more reputable ones like Viavision sometimes do it, eg. for their latest Jake and the Fatman release they used dual layer discs but crunched it down to 3.5mbps and what looks like heavy denoising before encoding, probably to help hide the macroblocking. Anecdotes are saying the original CBS DVD release is full bitrate (~7mbps). Whenever I buy a DVD I always try to find a copy of the original release instead of the rerelease. The rerelease is usually ok if it has the same disc count and layers.

[Sunoo]

On the other hand the print quality of the cover is so dull, grainy and looks like it's printed on regular A4 paper (no gloss/shine) that it really does look like a bootleg. Not sure what to think

This alone sounds to me like you got a bootleg, all my real Warner Archive discs have had high quality prints for the DVD case.

[pneumatic]

This alone sounds to me like you got a bootleg, all my real Warner Archive discs have had high quality prints for the DVD case.

Thanks for this piece of information. I think I'll message the seller and try to get a refund.

I'm starting to think bootlegging might be more of an issue with DVD than I thought, cause I was about to buy another DVD box set just now as it was listed at half the price elsewhere, but it seemed a bit too good to be true so I kept researching their site and found it says "ships from our Hong Kong warehouse" which doesn't sound right - why would an American DVD publisher keep copies in a Hong Kong warehouse? Do Hong Kongers like old American TV shows? I don't think so. Dubious.

[pneumatic]

For the record it has been confirmed my copy is a bootleg

[dmitche3]

I just opened a question regarding the same issue. The Man From UNCLE 8-Moives Collection notes the same thing. Only two of the four discs I've been able to rip so far.

And Yes, I believe that they are a DVD-R. and not a DVD. They are purple.

It appears to rip a title and at the end of it it states: "Error 'OS error - This device does not exist' occurred while reading '/VIDEO_TS/VTS_04_1.VOB' at offset '0'

thats a power error

I can't believe it but you are correct. A one in a million but both of my DVD players are now dead. One internal and one external. I still can't believe that this happened. It is too incredible to believe both are having power issues as they have separate power supplies. I even connected the external to a powered hub to see if that helped but no good. I guess that I've seen everything now.

[RAHRL]

I posted a similiar topic on this forum regarding DVD-R’s of the Warner Archive Collection.

In my case it was Amelia Earhart, Final Flight that I purchased through a partner of Amazon US.

The artwork on the cover and the disc look ok, but I could do that myself with a color copier.

MakeMKV and DVDFab report no copy protection at all on the disc. Could that be right?
I made several enquiries, but nobody can tell me for sure that’s how it should be or not.

MakeMKV has no problems ripping the disc.

The vendor assured me the copy was genuine, but refunded the item anyway.

Would you know how to determine the disc is a bootleg or not?

[RAHRL]

This is my topic:

Can rewritable DVD's have copy-protection?
viewtopic.php?p=151942#p151942

where I wrongly talk about rewritable dvd’s. That should be recordable dvd’s.