Sony to bring official Blu-ray discs to China as pirates peddle crapware
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will distribute 30 current Blu-ray titles in China, making it the first Hollywood studio to do so, according to Variety magazine.
Titles including Hancock, Kung Fu Hustle, the Spider-Man trilogy, Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind will be available for around 205 yuan (about £18).
Initially, Sony will import discs, but it is hoped that local production facilities will be in place within a year. This would help reduce prices and gain extra protection from the Chinese authorities against pirates.
Disney and Warner Bros may be close to releasing Blu-ray movies in China. A spokesman for Disney said that they would launch once local Blu-ray replication capability is ready, possibly in the spring or summer of next year.
I reported last month that Chinese pirates are knocking out AVCHD-encoded DVDs and passing them off as Blu-ray discs.
The trouble is that, to the average consumer, the discs appear to be genuine, play in Blu-ray players, and do offer better than standard definition quality. AVCHD is the near-HD quality encoding format often found in digital camcorders -- it's good, but nowhere near as good as genuine Blu-ray.
If these discs make it outside China, as they invariably will, it could harm the Blu-ray format. Once again, consumers need to be reminded not to deal with fake goods.
(Via Variety)
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