Be wary of Brazilian Carpenters DVDs

[Harry]

There's been a flood of Brazilian-issued Carpenters DVDs on eBay. Back last year, a Brazilian DVD magazine offered readers a free Carpenters DVD with a particular issue. Those immediately hit eBay, and I bought one. This was before GOLD was issued legitimately in the States. That DVD had a reasonably functional menu, but the actual video mastering looked like it came from an old VHS tape. The tracks on it were identical to the GOLD/YESTERDAY ONCE MORE sets, but were chopped up into chronological order.

Now I see a bunch of INTERPRETATIONS videos listed on eBay also coming out of Brazil with some evidence of coming from the same magazine. I just don't believe that these videos were properly licensed (at least not for export to the US) and mastered. If they were, you'd see them showing up at other online retailers. One giveaway is that these fakers always list the audio as Dolby Digital 5.1. The fact is that these videos were never mastered that way to begin with, so how could they legitimately be released in 5.1 channels of surround sound. Even the legit GOLD DVD is really only two channels of stereo, and I don't believe Richard has been spending time in Brazil remastering the audio for 5.1 sound for release only to the Brazilian market.

Bottom line -- buyer beware.

Harry
...with a warning, online...

 

[andywithaz]

I hope that with all this technology by dolby that Richard will release a DVD with 5.1,6.1, or even 7.1 surround sound!

 

[Murray]

Now I see a bunch of INTERPRETATIONS videos listed on eBay also coming out of Brazil with some evidence of coming from the same magazine. I just don't believe that these videos were properly licensed (at least not for export to the US) and mastered.

I have that Brazilian "Interpretations" DVD, and I believe that it was mastered directly from the Japanese laserdisc. It is much sharper than VHS, but not as sharp as the legitimate "Interpretations" DVD. It also contains two extra videos, "Ticket to Ride" and "Please Mr Postman", exactly like on the laserdisc version. I was very satisfied with the quality, that is until I bought the "official" DVD. Now that it has been officially released, I can't see any reason why anyone would want one of the Brazilian ones, other than as a curiosity.

The DVD DOES contain a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, but since I don't have a surround receiver, I can't comment on the quality of the mix. You may wonder HOW I know it has a DD 5.1 track when I don't have a surround receiver? I have an old Konka DVD player that can't properly play regular 2 channel PCM stereo. The audio skips terribly on the Japanese YOM DVD, and on every other PCM stereo DVD that I own. The audio NEVER skips when playing a DVD with a DD 5.1 track. When I play the Brazilian "Interpretations" DVD, and select "stereo" the audio skips, but it doesn't skip when I have selected the 5.1 track!

Murray

 

[Harry]

Wow. This post was dredged up from last year. I too now have the US version of Interpretations, so I haven't given much thought to the Brazilian DVD. I'll bet that if it DOES have a DD 5.1 track, it's just coded to have one, but it's not likely a genuine mix. That is, any stereo track can be run through a Dolby Pro-logic system to generate multiple channels, but really all it's doing is isolating the vocals into the center channel and spreading the left/right stuff between the remaining speakers. Coded into DD 5.1 on a DVD would 'light up' the 5.1 sensors, but all you'd really end up with is a standard Stereo Surround mix hard-coded that way.

It would've been nice if Richard HAD taken the time to mix these into proper 5.1 mixes; given his penchant for mixing things, it seems a natural. I guess Universal didn't really care about it one way or the other, so the simplest, easiest method was chosen.

Harry
...happy to have the DVDs at all, online...