7 movies on DVD for $4.25

I was at the mall and there were 5 stores side-by-side that sold pirated software and movies on CDs and DVDs. I stopped at each one and asked if any had any DVDs with American TV shows. None did.

One guy pulled out a private notebook he had hidden under his desk and opened it. It was all porn movies. This was the first time I had seen porn in Malaysia. I know its illegal but I heard that most of these pirate shops have porn, but you have to ask to see it. I'm guessing they only take out the porn when there are no Malays in the store.

The last shop I came to had a wall of these DVDs for RM 15 (about USD 4.25) each. They each had 7 movies and all had a theme like gangster movies, kung fu movies, sci-fi movies, or they were actor/actress based.

I bought the Best of Bruce Willis. It contains Die Hard 1, 2, 3, 12 Monkeys, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and The Bonfire of the Vanities. It claims to have Digital Surround Sound. If you check out my favorite movies of all time you'll see that Die Hard, Unbreakable and Sixth Sense are there. I liked 12 Monkey's a lot but it doesn't quite make my all time favorite list. I enjoyed Die Hard 2 and 3 but they don't make the list.

Pirates have their own labels and this company is named Superbit. I click on Languages and see that the movies are sub-titled in English, Chinese (probably Mandarin), Korean, Malaysian and Thai. The DVD even has scene selection with each movie. Plus I can jump next/previous chapter. This is great. On other pirated DVDs the entire movie is one big chapter.

On the back of the DVD jacket was this logo.

I hit Play on the movie. I'm watching on my PC from my DVD drive. The picture is wide-screen and the quality is quite good but small. I'm guessing they scale it down to save space. I can tell it's not filmed off the screen. The picture and sound quality are good. I'm quite pleased actually.

I tried a few different DVD playing software and others displayed it full screen and it still looked good! They did a great job at squeezing 7 movies on a DVD without any major loss of quality or features. I'm quite amazed ... and all for $4.25.

I've seen the quality of a VCD with 5 movies on a CD. It's horrible. Think of saving a JPEG with too much compression. That's what its like.

It's easy to understand why probably 95% of the people in Malaysia buy pirated DVDs. Would you rather pay $30 for one movie or $4.25 for 7 movies? Most people can't afford to buy a $30 movie anyway.

What I find amazing is all of the news stories about how Malaysia is cracking down on piracy and yet it's not making a dent. I don't see how these shops can even open if it were illegal. It would be so easy for an undercover cop to walk into a shop and close it down and take all of their property on a daily basis. If they were really cracking down, the shops would not be open in the first place. The "crack down" is really a joke. A few people are arrested; a few stores are closed but re-open later and nothing changes.