Are these TV box sets bootlegged?

It was recently announced that the Game of Thrones TV series would wrap up before all of the books were finished. I've read all of the books but don't want to get left behind so I figure I should start watching the show. I was at the flea market today and snagged all four box sets for a really good, but not too good to be true, price. They were all new and shrink wrapped. Once I got them home and started looking over them I noticed a few things that are just ever so slightly off.

First the things that are right:

The disks look and smell legit (I swear cheapo disks have a smell), they're the right color and all that.
They play fine, have title screens, and generally seem like the real deal.
The boxes all seem high quality, with embossed raised letters and the whole nine yards.
All of the inserts are there and look right.
The shrink wrap on seasons 1, 2, and 3 has the silver and shiny HBO stickers on it.

What's wrong:

The writing on the back of one of the seasons is slightly blurry. It's not bad, it could just be the print run was low on ink or something.
Season 4 is my big concern, it was released a couple of weeks ago. The set I have is a slim DVD case with 5 disks. Everything I see online has that awful foldout packaging. The back of the packaging is also different. It has episode descriptions rather than a description of the season.

The glue holding the disk trays down is coming off in one of the sets.

I worked at a used videogame/DVD store for several years and fakes were almost always super easy to spot. I also understand that technology has advanced in the past five or so years and fakes are better than they used to be.

I realize this is all super unimportant and as long as they play fine I don't really care but part of me just has to know. Could they be production line defective rejects? Maybe ordered from another country? If they are fake then they're certainly the best fakes I've ever seen, it's just the few little imperfections nagging at me.

Anyone know a surefire way to see if a DVD is a copy?

I dunno, if they're bootlegs, somebody really put in a lot of effort to make them look legit, which is very unusual. Usually if they get the labels inkjet-printed on glossy paper instead of written on with sharpie, that's a high-effort bootleg

GameboyRMH wrote: I dunno, if they're bootlegs, somebody really put in a lot of effort to make them look legit, which is very unusual. Usually if they get the labels inkjet-printed on glossy paper instead of written on with sharpie, that's a high-effort bootleg

Those are my thoughts. If it weren't for a couple of things being slightly off I'd never even wonder. The 4th season is really the only one that raises any real alarm, the different case and episode descriptions on the back of the case are just a bit strange.

They could be B-runs or promo copies or something as well. Though to be fair, I bought what I thought was a legit copy of the initial D series, and it's a bootleg, anda very high qualkity one at that. I didn't know until the fansubs started.

I'd be surprised that someone would bother to mix legit and bootleg discs in a given set. I'd figure the whole thing was fake, or not. But perhaps that's what they were hoping I'd think!

A) "fell off a truck"

B) bought from a video store or retail store the went out of business

C) "fell off a truck"

D) The flaws you see meant it was rejected and sold in lots a "b stock"

E) bought at a yard sale and resold.

F) "fell off a truck"

I'm going with "bootleg from the Far East." Back when I was sailing, you could buy any cassette tape for a buck at any vendor in Singapore. They were all bootleg. All came with a reasonable likeness of the real cassette box/printed material. Cassettes were labeled. And, actually a higher quality cassette/tape than what was being sold in the US for 8-10x the price. So they tell me.

I have a few nice Folex watches. People put effort into knock offs. I'm leaning towards them being a knock off.

Woah woah woah woah... people still by physical media these days?

Hell, I finally caved and stopped burning mp3 cd's like two years ago. Get with the times man

And being a Canadian... everything media-wise I own is bootlegged because I am an awful person

Manufactured DVD's normally have a silver back, DVD-R's have a color to the back.

That's the way it used to be, not sure if it's true anymore. Of course I suspect a higher quality copy could be "pressed" in China.

Don't know about that, but with China these days, counterfeiting and bootlegging is harder to detect than ever. I saw a counterfeit Martin guitar (with "FAKE" burned into the headstock) and if I hadn't have looked over it I would have never known. If I and my Dad hadn't owned 10-15 Martins, I don't think I'd have been able to tell what was wrong on it other than it didn't sound that great--but I've owned real Martins that were duds, so even that wouldn't tell me anything.

Your answer is in your OP. You said flea-market.

HiTempguy wrote: Woah woah woah woah... people still by physical media these days?

Abso-berking-lutely! The last thing I want is to lose something I paid money for when the computer/pad/pod/console inevitably bites it, or the digital rights desides to have a shiny happy person attack and lock me out of it. Nor do I want to waste time and drive space backing all that crap and restoring it.

Season 4 blu-ray is 4 discs, the DVD version is 5: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Season-4-Various/dp/B00KHWSB5M/ref=tmm_dvd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

Duke wrote: the digital rights desides to have a shiny happy person attack and lock me out of it.

Well bad news, this only happens with legally-purchased media.

Duke wrote: Nor do I want to waste time and drive space backing all that crap and restoring it.

Costs as much as 3-4 legit movies and takes less time than the first DRM-related problem you're likely to run into. BTW, did you know your DVDs are far from indestructible?

Fully legit. Just like this:

'Robert?'

GameboyRMH wrote:

Duke wrote: the digital rights desides to have a shiny happy person attack and lock me out of it.

Well bad news, this only happens with legally-purchased media.

Duke wrote: Nor do I want to waste time and drive space backing all that crap and restoring it.

Costs as much as 3-4 legit movies and takes less time than the first DRM-related problem you're likely to run into. BTW, did you know your DVDs are far from indestructible?

I want legally-purchased physical copies because in my experience I have at least 80% less trouble getting them to run consistently. Of course they're not indestructible. Nothing is. Take care of your E36 M3.

I won't DL or buy bootlegged stuff on principle. And I have enough issues with occasional hiccups scrambling apps and music on my phone to know that I have no desire to depend 100% on download media, legitimate or not.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Fully legit. Just like this:

That's gotta be a fake fake. "The Furniture Of Law Enforcement"? Others in the series include "Ray Liotta" and "Optical Prime"? It's like when Archie McPhee stopped finding weird crap other people made and just started to produce their own.

More pictures!

Those look legit to me, honestly. I think the manufacturing has been cheaped out as much as possible because of dropping market share. The one time I got a bootleg (from amazon) it was really obvious. That manufacturing looks too good to be fake.

Also, when did RobertCop say "I'll Be Back!"? That's from Torminator!

Duke wrote:

HiTempguy wrote: Woah woah woah woah... people still by physical media these days?

Abso-berking-*lutely*! The last thing I want is to lose something I paid money for when the computer/pad/pod/console inevitably bites it, or the digital rights desides to have a shiny happy person attack and lock me out of it. Nor do I want to waste time and drive space backing all that crap and restoring it.

Same here. Gimme DVD backup over magnetic any day; all it takes is a lightning strike 20 miles away and all my photos etc stored on a hard drive are poof, gone.

DVD's actually degrade quite quickly. Personally, I buy a new portable HD every two years (so back in 2008 it was 160gb, then 2010 was 500gb, then 2012 was 1.5tb). I currently have a 3tb in the desktop computer because why the hell not at like $120?

So in short, backup stuff yourself. Its super cheap nowadays... I literally have EVERY.SINGLE.RALLYVIDEO ever made. Its about 1TB.

Not to get off topic but as a dad I've become a big fan of the blu-ray/DVD/digital pack on movies. Blu-ray goes in the home theatre, dvd goes in the travel/car player, and the digital version does great when you are in a pinch at a doctors visit or out to dinner, etc.

After popping all of the disks in my PS3 I've come to the conclusion that the first three seasons are legitimate and season 4 is not. Season 4 is a stellar bootleg but the video is choppy and the packaging is a little too off. The disks also have a little trouble reading. The title menus, closed captions, and special features are all there but it's just not right.

For the record, I'm all about and usually do the digital downloads. In this case it was cheaper to buy the DVD's (even with the one being a fake) than to download and I can sell them later if I choose, with the exception of the bootleg copy that is.