Danny's Weblog

Yes, you can find dual-layer DVDs in Phnom Penh -- from China

In my previous posting on DVDs available in Phnom Penh, I pointed out that all the DVD copies you see are single-layer, whatever the box says. I also speculated that genuine Chinese DVDs may be available in dual-layer.

This week I experimented. There's a large Chinese-oriented DVD/CD store on the 3rd floor of the Soraya Mall at the northeast corner; it has a lot of Chinese movies, plus software with Chinese packaging. (It even has a Korean section, which I'd never noticed anywhere else in PP.)

The staff did not speak very good English, but they had heard of the term "dual layer", although they were unclear on what it meant (as indeed I would have been up till quite recently). They started off by waving boxes with a logo saying "9" at me, until I pointed out that these did not actually say "dual layer", the way the kosher labels do, and I would not believe them if they did.

Eventually they came up with what appeared to be a kosher DVD from China *of a Chinese movie* (I was assuming that like Thailand the Chicoms protect their own industry even though they allow unfettered piracy of other countries' products, much like the USA in the 18th century). I was won over because it was labelled "Region 6" – I have never seen that on any other DVD in PP, although one sees "Region 1" quite often (and it is not true). So I crossed my fingers and hoped that the "dual layer" claim was true.

I did not ask the manager (evidently Chinese) to check it, and paid 4 USD, so I felt rather foolish until I checked it and verified that it was a dual-layer – I think the capacity was 6.5 GB. (I usually don't pay more than 2 USD for a DVD, and that day I happened to buy seven DVDs at a dollar each that were quite good.)

It's called "The Music Box": www.lifeofguangzhou.com [http://www.lifeofguangzhou.com/node_10/node_35/node_109/node_266/2006/03/31/11437845481570.shtml]

There were a few more interesting elements:

1. My software actually showed it was *not* a region 6 disk; it displayed as Region 1, 2, 3... etc for apparently all regions. (It occurs to me that this may have been the *very first* disk my player has ever played which was not Region 0.)

2. Despite the extra data, and with a not very long movie, the quality was not very good. There were plenty of little specks of dirt on the image that showed it had been made from an optical print of routine theater-issue quality. I wonder if these imperfections caused a high noise floor that wasted the bitrate leaving nothing extra for the picture.

Still the image was adequate, even when zoomed in to fill the screen from the 16:9 source. Shadow detail was fair. I don't think it was simply captured from a theatrical screening.

There was one section, about two minutes long, with several read glitches. My DVD player seems to show read errors that other players don't, so I won't hold that against the DVD; however, a similar region did show up when I did a surface scan on my computer's DVD drive.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was a kosher digitization from a poor print by a service company that is inexpert. The menu system, for instance, looks more amateurish than most ripoff disks.

3. Again suggesting a theatrical print, it had Chinese and English subtitles burned onto the image; there were no separate sub tracks on the DVD. (I'm guessing the producers had US distribution in mind, and apparently there was an official DVD release in 2006-05, although I can see no reference to a theatrical run.)

DVD video copies in Phnom Penh

Here are some things I've noticed about the cheap video copies available in Phnom Penh. Much of this will apply to Thailand and any other country in Asia.

1. The information on the outside of the box cannot be trusted at all, even on very significant details like the subtitle or dialogue track languages. My impression is that for movies which already exist on DVD, the copy just shows a scan of the artwork from the product it was stolen from – for instance, the recent "Doom" was available with a cover with the slogan "Keiner kommt hier lebend raus!". This is then overlaid with a text box giving the language info, because the copier frequently downloads "fansubs" in other languages from the internet and adds them to the data streams.

Even when the desired languages are present on the disk, they are surprisingly often mislabelled or unlabelled. My guess is that the person who knows how to specify the language name when burning the master is not someone who *knows* a lot of languages.

2. For instance, most DVD covers show something like the "DVD 9" symbol. Even when the "logo" carries the words "dual layer", it is not. I bought a DVD writer today and asked to check it; the (very helpful) technician had suggested I bring a DVD 9 to check the dual-layer aspect, but I went to all three stores I normally frequent and could not find *one*.

At one store, the salesman said he knew of a few real DVD 9's but when I asked him to check them on a PC he discovered that only one out of 5 had more than 4.7 GB: it was 4.85 GB! I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone would burn a dual-layer DVD so close to fitting on a single-layer, and concluded it was probably a single-layer too.

Actually, when I showed up to check the drive, the tech had found what he assured me was a real dual-layer DVD. It was a Chinese movie; perhaps I should try some of the Chinese-language video stores.

3. When you buy DVDs, you should always ask the store to check the quality. I have several times discovered that the disk does not work at all in their drive; once or twice they tried several of the same title and they were all bad. My DVD player has problems with perhaps 20% of disks and cannot play them to the end (although I've been having a run of good luck lately). I therefore like to go through the chapters checking that they're all accessible, although this by no means guarantees that the disk is also usable on my drive, and I have been getting lazy on this.

Irritatingly, in one store the owner has taken it upon himself to not even demo DVDs which are not what he calls "top" quality to me. Sometimes, if I feel I will never watch the movie again, I'll put up with a cam copy, as long as the sound is reasonably clear.

4. Even the best copies have typically been compressed to fit on a single layer DVDR. My copy of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is mostly clear, but has a few patches with severe digitizing artifacts. Irritatingly, they do not always take the opportunity to remove the lock on the "FBI Warning" and similar infuriating stuff that you have to sit through on the legit version.

It would be nice if there were some sort of standard labelling system so that you could check the quality of a disk at a glance. Even if the *stores* didn't want to use it, the customers could theoretically *ask* for all the details, if there were some concise, standardized jargon. At the moment the only word I can use with the Cambos is "clear". One shop uses "90%" and "95%", but has not succeeded in explaning to me what those terms mean.

5. In order to help me learn Khmer, I have looked around for DVDs with Khmer audio and subtitles.

I have found *no* Hollywood movie available on DVD with Khmer subtitles. What you *can* get is VCDs with a Khmer audio track, no English, but sometimes English subtitles hardcoded on the video. I find them very hard to learn Khmer from because the Khmer seems to be a very free translation (to the extent I can figure out what they're saying at all) so the English subs are little use.

I have found a few *Khmer* movies with English and Khmer subs, but they tend to be about kings, wizards and giant snakes, so the vocabulary involved is not ideal. (Also, the quality of the English subs is not wonderful.)

I have experimented with subtitle software and it seems surprisingly easy to rip the English subtitles from a Hollywood DVD so that you have a text file which can easily be used to carry out a translation to Khmer. If I get around to it I may produce a DVD with Khmer subtitles and see how long it takes before it appears at Soriya.

When I ask vendors why DVDs are not available with Khmer subtitles they just say that Cambodia is a small market. It seems to me it would not be that difficult to set up fansubbing groups as are common in the US anime world. This could be emailed back to the manufacturers in Malaysia and Vietnam. The subtitle files are not hard to add and are amazingly small, even though they are stored on the disk as bitmaps. It's hard to see exactly how to *make money* of course, although surely Khmers would prefer DVDs with subs to no Khmer at all. Perhaps Khmers are just not very good readers and would only respond to products with Khmer audio tracks.

It occurs to me that any Khmer fansubbers would have to be very careful to wait until the kosher English subs are available from the official DVD release. Their chance of producing anything comprehensible from the subs available on zero-day releases would be zero.

6. I can see no sign of an official crackdown on copyright evasion. Around the same time as I saw reports that there was some sort of crackdown in Malaysia, I noticed a slowdown in supply, and then I saw that one store was reduced to receiving DVDs shipped in suitcases, but that's about it.

The porno isn't on display, but if you are a single man walking around without your girlfriend you will find several stores eager to demonstrate that they have it for sale (I was not brave enough to ask them to demo it however). OTOH the porno available seems pretty drab and flyspecked.

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