(continued from last post)
For those that don't want to read through those, I'll summarize the main points here. This will get a little technical, but I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible to understand.
1) Region 0 (No Region) or All Region discs are not legit 99% of the time. There have been a couple of releases by official licensing companies that have been set this way, but those are the exception, not the rule.
2) It ships from Hong Kong. There are virtually no legitmate anime releases in China, not to mention that Hong Kong is a veritable bootlegging mecca. This said, if the disc has Chinese subtitles, you can bet it's a bootleg and be sure of yourself. Taiwan has problems with bootlegging as well, but I'm not sure on their level of enforcing the Berne Convention, so be wary of Taiwanese imports as well.
3) The subtitles appear in 'Engrish'. Often, these Chinese imports have been translated from Japanese to Chinese and then to English by someone who isn't very good at English to begin with. This results in spelling errors, bad grammar, utterly nonsensical dialogue, and generally an overall bad translation.
'Engrish' is a term related to the way that Japan usually uses English words and phrases haphazardly, and most of the time it doesn't make any sense. The Japanese language has no proper pronounciation for the letter L; it comes out sounding more like R - hence 'English' becomes 'Engrish'.
4) If the series is astoundingly lower priced than the domestic release, it's almost invariably a bootleg. If the complete American release costs $120, and you find the same series on an internet store or eBay for $35-40, it's a bootleg.
5) If there are more episodes on the discs than the domestic release. American releases generally have 3 or 4 episodes per disc, and on occasion 5 or 6; I've never seen any with 7 episodes on the disc. Japanese releases generally have 2 or 3 episodes per disc, with 4 or 5 appearing occasionally. If the disc has 8 or more episodes on one disc, it's a bootleg, without a doubt.
This has to do with the way DVDs are authored. DVDs use MPEG-2 compression, which, when used properly, can ensure excellent visual quality. The problem - MPEG-2 takes up a lot of space, since it requires a high datarate to ensure that quality (datarate = how many KBs or MBs the player has to read per second). A Single-Layer DVD holds 4.7 GB of data. One 25 minute episode in professional MPEG-2 format in America generally ranges from 1.1-1.5 GB, meaning you could fit 3 or 4 episodes on the disc. A Dual-Layer disc holds 8.5 GB, meaning you could fit 5 or 6 episodes on the disc (a 7th could fit if there aren't any special features and possibly a very simple menu, but finding a legit disc with 7 episodes on it is rare). Japanese releases generally take up 1.5-2.1 GB per episode.
When dealing with formats like MPEG-2, the higher the filesize/datarate, the higher the quality, depending on the source that's being stored in it. The American release size per episode is about the smallest you can make an episode of anime and still retain high quality (those sizes include the English and Japanese audio tracks, which often take up 400-500 MB; by comparison, official Japanese releases generally only have Japanese audio without any subtitles, making the video part of the file much larger - and therefore, much higher quality).
Bootlegs, on the other hand, squeeze 8, 9, or even 10 episodes on one disc. If this is in Single-Layer format, that means that the episodes are stored at 1/2 to 1/3 of the quality of the American release; if it's Dual-Layer, it means it's stored at 3/4-9/10 of the quality of the American release. As far as I know, few bootlegs are dual-layered.
There are tricks that can help the MPEG-2 compressor not lose as much quality on the video when storing it at such lower datarates. Overfiltering or incorrectly capturing parts of the video (smoothing, bad chroma transfer, blurring the video, etc.) can eliminate a lot of data that the DVD doesn't have to store, making it easier for more episodes to be put on the disc, but the overfiltering and incorrect capturing degrades the video quality immensely.
Now, yes, there are some bootleggers that make direct rips of the American release, add Chinese subtitles, and don't degrade the quality of the video signal much by not putting outrageous numbers of episodes on one disc, but just because that's the case doesn't make it right. These people are not paying the Japanese companies, they're not paying the American companies, they're not paying anyone but themselves. In short, by buying any sort of bootleg, you're not helping the anime community, and more than likely making it even harder for anime to be released in your respective country. You're not supporting anyone but criminals when you buy these things.
(continued in next post)
