As you may recall, I recently had some friends from the UK visit me here in Hong Kong. One of the things we talked about was the quality of Chinese goods.
When I was a kid, the label "Made in China" meant poor quality. Everybody knew this and would avoid these products like the plague. Over time, as more and more products got made in China, I made the argument to my friends that the quality of goods in China has also risen until we are at the stage now where most stuff is of reasonable quality (given the price). Unfortunately, I now have to eat humble pie and take back that statement.
As you know, I have recently been rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation. What I didn't say at the time was that the DVDs I have been watching were the Chinese version. The reason being that they are a lot cheaper than the HK version. For example, in HK, buying 1 complete season of Star Trek costs over HK$1,000. This is a ridiculous price which I wasn't prepared to pay - hence I ended up buying the China version instead. Now, at this point, I should also mention that I bought original DVDs and not pirates (at least thats what I hope!!).
Now for the drop in price, I was expecting some cuts in quality. And sure enough, the picture quality of the DVDs looked more like VCDs. This didn't bother me - as I said, I was expecting it.
What I wasn't expecting was a cut in the length of the DVD. Currently, each DVD houses 4 episodes. Unfortunately, due to stupid Chinese people, the fourth episode on each DVD is cut short. In some cases, the very last bit is missing (just before Picard says "Engage" and the Enterprise flies off into the sunset). However, in some cases, a significant portion has been lost (and I know as I have seen these before) resulting in the twist at the end of the show being lost as well!
This. really. pisses. me. off.
So much so that I am now desperately hoping that the stock market in China will crash and lots of people will be bankrupt and then jump off a building and die.
And before you ask - no, I am not and have never pretended to be a nice guy.
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2 comments:
You can just buy pirated DVDs in China. I don't think there are any formal authorized releases here. Of course you can't expect anything.
Hope you didn't pay too much!
To be honest, I only paid a fraction of the cost that I would have paid in HK. However, it was still expensive enough to really grate when I found missing content on the DVDs.
To be honest, I wish I had just bought the pirated DVD now.
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