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Fake HDVDs hit market
(eastday.com)
Updated: 2004-11-15 09:47 Pirate DVDs that can hold
more movies and TV shows than traditional disks have become such a threat to the
country's video products market that the Shanghai General Team of Culture
Inspection has kicked off a citywide crackdown on illegal sales.
State
officials have launched a similar campaign across China.
Last week, the
city's team began a series of surprise raids on illegal DVD stores. Team
officials refused, however, to disclose detailed plans for the
effort.
"These highly compacted pirated discs will have a much greater
negative impact on the audio-visual product industry than ordinary DVDs, so
stopping their rampant development tops our working agenda," said a team
official surnamed Chen.
Unlike traditional DVDs, which generally contain
one movie or two to three episodes of a TV show, each highly compacted video
disc, or HDVD, can hold up to 10 episodes of a TV series or several
movies.
The disks, which first appeared in the city earlier this year,
have become popular because they sell for about the same price as a regular
pirate DVD - about 7 yuan (84 US cents).
Among the most popular are discs
containing TV shows made in South Korea and Japan, movies from Hong Kong and
Taiwan as well as Hollywood blockbusters.
While the technology should
make the picture quality of movies on HDVDs better than traditional DVDs, many
are packed with too many movies and are drawing complaints from
buyers.
"The scenes are always full of mosaics and sometimes the disc
can't be played at all," said Vincent Chen, a local office worker. "But it's
still more economical to get so many movies at such a low price."
Store
owners said that HDVDs are always among the best sellers despite a high turnover
rate caused by shoddy quality.
The bootleg market has grown so rapidly
that the pirate discs are selling at about twice the rate of copyrighted discs,
producers said.
"At this rate, pirate HDVD's impact on the country's
audio-visual product market will be destructive," said Zhu Zhibing, a TV series
producer told the Shanghai Morning Post.
Earlier this month, the Ministry
of Culture also launched a nationwide campaign to combat the sale of pirate
HDVDs. The crackdown will run through the end of next February, state officials
said.
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