List of Potential Bootlegs

[olePigeon]

I'm revisiting this idea. Not sure where I originally posted it, but Alec covered this exact issue I was having on his Technology Connections extras YouTube.

I bought several DVD box sets for cheap, and all of them came up as potential bootlegs when using MakeMKV. They were also terrible quality. I was luckily able to return them to Amazon (for a fee) and instead paid about 4x the amount for the original DVD releases.

I thought it would be useful to maintain a list (with pictures) of the various horribly s---ty box sets out there that are very likely bootlegs. Upon closer inspection, some of them are so bad it's comical. Horribly scanned slip covers from other box set releases. They couldn't even be bother to update the ISBN, so it doesn't even match.

They are sometimes advertised as "repackaged" DVDs, which I took to mean that maybe Amazon just stuck the discs into a new clamshell and resold them on the cheap to recoup money on returns. Nope.

Essentially, every one of them came in a large multi-disc clamshell. So as a general rule of thumb, I recommend always avoiding those. The problem is that they often use the same artwork as the original DVD set releases, then the Amazon listings are purposefully obtuse and never show the whole packaging.

Here are just a couple examples I've purchased that were terrible:

https://www.amazon.com/Are-Being-Served ... 002I9TZHA/
(wrong ISBN and horrible scanned slip cover.)
https://www.amazon.com/RED-DWARF-COMPLE ... 00DVKSVJ8/
(this one I complained about to Amazon and they actually pulled it, but there are other sellers with the same product)

[olePigeon]

As a side note: These may very well still be licensed products, but the quality is so horrendous, it'd be a shocker to me if they were.

[dcoke22]

Was Amazon.com the seller or was it a 3rd party? Personally, I haven't had Amazon.com sell me a counterfeit disc.

[gkar_of_narn]

I got most of my bootlegs from:

Ebay
Amazon 3rd party
Walmart 3rd party

All 3 places listed above have gotten better at screening out knockoffs.

Surprisingly, GoodWillBooks.com were all clean except they had a tendency to over buff their DVD's so I would run into a lot of bad ones.