Anime Your opinion on HK DVDs...

For those who don't know, there are many companies in Honk Kong that sell anime internationally at rediculously cheap prices. An entire series for $20 - $30. They are mutliregion dvds which play on any kind of dvd player around the world, so it's pretty convenient. The problem is that it's entrily in Japanese audio, with English and Chinese subtitles. Well, I'm not a big fan of dubs anyway. I love HK DVDs, but some people refuse to buy it because they believe it's piracy. I alternate back and forth between HK and licenced DVDS, because sometimes the HK version has horribly crappy subs. My collection is about half and half. Are you strictly legal, proudly pirating or both?

 

I try to stay strictly legal. It's a very rare HK DVD that's not a pirate (I think the only one I directly heard of was Jin-Roh), but the Odex releases out of Singapore are also very inexpensive, English-subbed, and totally above-board. But with their newer discs, they're going to just Region 3, which makes it less convenient for people who don't watch on region-modded DVD-ROM and such. I have a friend who got an HK set of Great Teacher Onizuka, and the subtitles are so bad (they don't even have any of the original Japanese names, except for Onizuka himself) that I practically refuse to watch them.

 

Mostly, I'm agin it. I'd rather buy official stuff. From time to time though, it's impossible to find official DVDs of some stuff. In such situations, I have nothing agin HK stuff.

 

I buy HK DVDs... yep yep, but the subtitles are usually crappy and in Engrish, instead... sometimes they're good, yeah...

And yeah, it's annoying when they don't have their names in Japanese... like for Gravitation, they called Yuki Eiri "Ying Kwan".... LOL

I dunno whether to call this "pirating" or not, but either way, if I really like the series, when it gets licensed and whatnot, I buy it...

I guess I'm both. :/