www.makemkv.com

2 years ago I bought Shout Factory release of "Homicide: Life On The Street" (Complete Series) on DVD. Every disc that I use to rip via MakeMKV. I get a message that the disc was made using DVDFAB MacTheRipper. Is this a sign that the copy I bought was actually pirated/counterfeit or is this likely Shout Factory being lazy when they pressed the discs?

Just mildly curious.

Check the color of the disc's bottom side. If it's some shade of purple, it's probably a counterfeit. (Do note however, there are legit examples like manufacturered-on-demand movies that are shipped on DVD-R)

What does MakeMKV say for the disc protection? Typical DVD releases should have CSS. Counterfeit discs never do.

This next one isnt 100% conclusive, but: how many gigabytes of data is on the disc? If it's around 4GB, that sounds fishy in my opinion. 6-7GB on a disc is usually where legit DVDs would be.

I'm pretty sure it's a bootleg The amazing thing is that I bought this on Amazon.

strubdog wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 09, 2024 11:04 pm

I'm pretty sure it's a bootleg The amazing thing is that I bought this on Amazon.

Nothing amazing there! There's tons of bootleg discs on Amazon.

strubdog wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 09, 2024 11:04 pm

I'm pretty sure it's a bootleg The amazing thing is that I bought this on Amazon.

It all about the seller not the store front
Amazon random seller who knows
Shipped and sold by Amazon likely not a fake.

I know what to look for now. I also know how to tell when I open the disc in MakeMKV.

You can add Red Dwarf and Are You Being Served? DVD box sets from Amazon as confirmed bootlegs.

The bootleg copies are sold in large multi-disc containers instead of individually packaged DVDs in a box set. Amazon advertises them as "repackaged." I thought perhaps the discs were taken from box sets that were returned damaged, then repackaged and sold at a discount.

No. They're just straight up fake, sold by Amazon. They've since stopped selling it. This is what it looks like so you know not to buy it:

https://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Being-Se ... 79079408X/

Here is an example of the Red Dwarf bootleg, still being sold by a 3rd party:

https://www.amazon.com/RED-DWARF-COMPLE ... 00DVKSVJ8/

Exact same packaging.

Found out too late when running MakeMKV to back them up to my network storage, so way past the return date. Very frustrating.

This is also bootleg:

https://www.amazon.com/Taxi-Complete-Ju ... 08N5GJPMB/

I let Amazon know. They pulled the other two, but are still selling this one. Don't buy it.

According to Keepa, Amazon hasn't been selling those first two titles (Red Dwarf and Are You Being Served Again?), at least not for years, so I suspect you got them from third-party sellers. I've bought hundreds of DVDs and Blu-Rays from Amazon over the years, both movies and television shows, and the only bootlegs I found when I ripped my disk collection came from eBay sellers offering surprisingly low prices.

So long as that seller didn't re-compress the disc images they ripped, as in they used dual-layer media where needed and you still have all the menus and special features and decent quality, I wouldn't fret too much over it... unless you paid full retail price for those discs, then I'd be annoyed Otherwise view it as they pre-decrypted the discs for you hah. At worst you might wanna back those discs up as if they used shoddy DVD media it could fail sooner than expected (like, god forbid they used Fry's Electronics DVDs haha)