bootlegs on eBay
 

I ordered Shutter, Ju-On, The Eye, and Dark Water on eBay from high-volume sellers with very high ratings. The 4 DVDs arrived yesterday, and all appear to be pirated, bootlegs, or whatever you call it.

The Eye has no barcode on the DVD case, and I can't find the other 3 barcodes in DVDProfiler. Worse, each of the covers is very similar but not identical to the covers shown in DVDProfiler.

So much for buying off eBay.

what i would do is contact the seller and tell them you are reporting them to ebay if they dont refund your money. (if you're absolutely sure about the bootleg status)

I would do that if I was sure about the bootleg status. Thing is, I have no idea how to be sure. I've been looking all over the web for some way to tell without any luck.

how much did you pay and what is the quality of the DVDs and packaging ?

I haven't had a chance to watch any of them yet, but the quality of the packaging is impressive. One of them was about $10 (Shutter). I think The Eye, Ju-On, and Dark Water were about $9/each including shipping. I got The Eye, Ju-On, and Dark Water from SunDevilDVD.

9$ each is ok if they include shipping ..
even bootlegs are around $5 in the chinese malls.
(if you dont have any around you - then the extra couple of bucks it the price of convenience)

the nice thing about digital media is that the bootlegs are usually as good as the origionals .. so its kind of transparent really

I'll look at mr. international, but the places I bought from had better ratings. I suspect that all mr. international sells are bootlegs.

I may give them a try, but everything I've read about identifying Asian bootlegs says that sending them without a case is a clear sign of bootlegging. After all, when one buys from HKFlix, YesAsia, CD-WOW, etc., cases are always included. I'm not asking you to defend them - just being cautious.

cases arent included because its cheaper to ship that way.

i've seen them receiving the boots in the chinese stores in the mall by where i worked.
they get them on a spindle with the flattened case wraps and inserts .. then they put them into cases - right in the store !
they keep getting raided and busted but they pop right back up a couple of days later.

Well, I plan to give mr. international a try as soon as I can get my region free DVD player working. The HDMI switcher I ordered is supposed to be delivered today, so I should finally get to hook up the player.