Bangkok

aardogfsu · #1 07-02-2006, 16:16

what place have you found to have the cheapest DVD's?...there's a guy in MBK top floor who will sell for 60baht a dvd if you buy 50 or more...so 3000baht for 50 movies...it's easy to get that many if you start buying sopranos, desperate housewives, etc...if you know a place that sells cheaper, where and what have you found? Thanks...

stevem · #2 08-02-2006, 05:37

According to stickman this week, try Jakarta, its a good fun town.

dawsey · #3 08-02-2006, 05:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevem

According to stickman this week, try Jakarta, its a good fun town.

55555555555555555 Taxi to Jakarta please!

LivinLOS · #4 08-02-2006, 09:22

Its all down to the seller.. The cheaper sales are often DVD5's.. They hold less data (4.7 GB) and to get a feature film on often (though not always) have to use the letterboxed version, drop audio tracks or increase the compression level.. Dual layer disc's (DVD9's) are more expensive to press and have an increased cost to supplier..

I watch all my movies on a projection setup.. Even a letterboxed title (as opposed toa 16:9 anamorphic) is a lot different in quality.. I tend to go only to the stores that treat me with 100% honesty and dont tell me discs are masters when they are not.. I am happy to pay 100 baht (11 or 12 for 1000 baht) as long as I dont get bad quality, recompressed or movies that hang at the layer change (so annoying.. jus as your in the final 3rd of the movie you dont get the end.. I lose it when that happens)..

Recompression between DVD9 and DVD5 needs a bit of a larger screen or a very good (high def) direct view to see the detail loss.. Explaining to Thais who are demo'ing the discs on a 22 inch TV over a composit connection is just futile.. I used to take a laptop into the shop and test each disc with some SW tools to know if it was a high bitrate version but now have just settled on a few places that dont argue when I bring them back even if they dont understand why.

One of the simplest tests to know if you have a DVD master disc, that needs no tools etc, is if the disc has animated menu's.. If its just a static pic with the menu options then its usually a bodged screener, duplicated net download, etc.. If its got animated menus its been sourced from a general release DVD and usually is fine..

Nid Noy · #5 09-02-2006, 03:30

Good info LL. There's loads of DVDs at Pantip Plaza. Check it out.

fzbkk · #6 10-02-2006, 18:10

Dual layer disc's weren't around in 04 when I was over there, and if they were I sure as hell didnt end up with any. I would say I have thrown out about 1/3 of my collection since returning home, dew to inferior quality. The biggest problem I found was the compression was shit and in the end, the quality was not satisfactory. I did end up with a couple filmed in the cinema.

I would like to add I was rather picky choosing who and where I would buy them from, trying to get the best deal possible. I like the idear of the laptop living los, I would check random dvd's on the sellers dvd player which most of them had hooked up in there shop, but when buying around 20 at a time it was just too time consuming to check them all.

LivinLOS · #7 10-02-2006, 18:21

Most of the street frontage ones are pretty bad.. The behind doors places tend to better quality..

Same with PS2 games.. where the lazer has to refocus all the time on bad quality discs you burn yuour PS2 laser out much faster with copy games.. The worse the copy the worse the burn out.

magnusvv · #8 10-02-2006, 21:11

DVD9 to DVD5 compressions can occasionally be seen on standard TVs if the tool for compression did not do a good job. I remember using early versions of dvd2one that would basically hose an entire scene if it was filmed in low light. Scenes with fogs or hazes are another thing where you can see the difference real easily, even with a standard tv set. There have been a few movies that bothered me so much I stopped watching them, but for most it is no problem at all. I think what LiL said before is true, unless you watch them on a high res setup like a computer screen or an HDTV you wont notice the quality difference for most movies.

I had a heck of a time with PC games I purchased in from a kiosk on the first floor in Pantip. Most were cds burned with self extracting zip files that were corrupted. I felt bad as I had purchased them for someone else and they were basically unusable. I think out of the 7 games we had 2 that actually worked. Any advice on this?

Schmeen · #9 12-02-2006, 08:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by fzbkk

Dual layer disc's weren't around in 04 when I was over there, and if they were I sure as hell didnt end up with any.

You just didn't get any.

Best place for DVD 9's is IT Mall. Most shops there deal mainly in 9's, can be up to 180B a disc though, but I've never had a dud.

fzbkk · #10 13-02-2006, 08:47

Me bad, Looking through my collection most of the dvd's I have kept are dvd9.