Where to buy TV series with quality video and audio?

[Friday]

When I bought American TV series in the USA, they are typically printed with only two or three 40-minute episodes per DVD. As a result, the picture and audio quality is reasonable.

But when I bought Chinese TV series in the mainland, the picture quality was always bad. Many DVDs seem to be even worse than watching on a 50-year old TV set. The audio isn't easy to hear and the subtitles often too blurry to be read.

Is there any store or Web merchant in the mainland that tries to maintain a reputation for selling only quality content?

[ChTTay]

If you're buying them cheap off the street then I can see the quality being pretty bad, equally cheap DVDs on taobao. You get what you pay for.

I couldn't see any on Amazon being poor quality if the price is about right and they're sold by Amazon directly. The same goes for something like JD as well. I've bought blue Ray's on Amazon before and they've been the same quality as in the UK.

[Flickserve]

Similarly if you are trying to 3 hours of footage or more on one DVD, the quality will definitely be poor. I bought some DVDs of films in a well to do bookshop in GZ and the quality is definitely fine. Admittedly I haven't watched much in the way of TV series.

[Leirosa]

I have some experience buying Chinese TV Series DVDs, but only outside of China. I've mostly bought the more legit US or Malaysian releases (had to turn to the Malaysian ones after Tai Seng went under), though I do have some experience with those lower quality discs.

 

If you want series that are decent quality, I would avoid buying the ones that come in plastic sleeves, or at least take care in doing so. These ones tend to be extra compressed to fit more episodes per dvd and they usually say HDVD-9 on the side.

 

HDVD is a higher compression format that fits more data per dvd disc, but the quality ends up being lower, in some cases much much lower if they try to jam say a dozen episodes on 1 disc (the more legit box sets in HDVD format stop at around 5 episodes per disc). If they are selling you a whole tv series on only 2 DVDs and for dirt cheap you know it's not going to be good quality.

 

Anyways, if you want better quality, try to look out for DVD-9 rather than HDVD-9, and keep an eye on the discs to episodes ratio.