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(Or how I buy Video Games and Blu-Ray Movies in Vietnam described over 1500 words)

I’m a pirate. I wish I were the high-seas version (what are high seas anyway?), but I’m just the standard RIAA-hated version, downloading (or purchasing illegal copies) music, movies, and games.

There are lots of good reasons why I pirate, but I do pay for the above legally from time to time as well, if that really matters.

Anyway, back to pirating in Vietnam. Most people (ok, everyone) do it. It’s quite difficult to not pirate, in fact. If you’re a company, it truly is an issue of money. When an employee’s monthly salary can cost $200 USD a month, weighing between $200 Windows software and an employee is probably an easy decision. The government has stated they will start to crack down (they are part of the WTO now, you know), and they have, from time to time, on….some companies.

On an individual level, you’re not going to teach (again, remember $200 monthly salary) someone to purchase legitimate music for $10/album, $20/DVD, $50/game when they can buy perfectly working copies for $1.50 a few minutes from their house, or download for free.

At the same time, there have been attempts. A couple of years ago Sony partnered with Galaxy to distribute a select sample of their movies here.

First titles into the market will be a package of 15 including “Casino Royale,” “Surf’s up” and the “Spider-Man” franchise, that go on sale May 9. After that some 5-10 titles per month will be released. Blu-Ray high definition discs will follow later.

If you go to the Galaxy site, you’ll see that announcement was made back in 2007, almost two years ago. A long time ago, I saw an ad for the legitimate DVDs at Victory, a pirated DVD shop in Hanoi. I don’t think you could actually buy them at Victory, however, you had to go find the Galaxy office or official distributor, of which their website lists:

• HCMC – Thuong Xa Tax, Nguyen Hue (ground floor), Q1.
• HCMC – Saigon Center , 65 Le loi (1st floor), Q1.

There have been no more title releases or Blu-Ray releases that I know of, and I think I can conclude this was a big fail, perhaps both in effort of execution, and concept.

This is something that Warner had also tried, with some success, in China with Superman Returns. They released a basic DVD version in China for $3 or so the same time bootlegs hit the market. Then again, China has done a real job of cracking down on piracy; Jimmy has been in Beijing for a while and told me it’s really difficult to find pirated movies there for him now.

So, to quickly summarize, for music and movies, you’ll find that Vietnamese download through torrents, file servers like Rapidshare and Megaupload (you can even buy accounts from authorized resellers here), or just go to a shop in the neighborhood.

Video and PC Games:

For video games, it’s a little bit trickier, but not really. If you live in Hanoi or TPHCM, things are still fairly simple, and shops have a big web presence so you can go research pricing and chat (instant messenger) with store employees before you get on your motorbike and take a trip.

In Hanoi, there’s shops like X-Game (http://xgame.vn/, 270 Ba Trieu, Q. Hai Ba Trung), and in TPHCM/Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, you have Halo Shop (http://www.haloshop.vn, 82 Pasteur, Q. 1, TPHCM).

If you’d rather do forums for some C to C action (consumer to consumer), though shops have their own threads there as well, you can visit the Muare.vn forums (http://muare.vn/forum/GameItems.ttvn), which is more focused on Hanoi users.

When I say video games, I do mean both console and PC games, though Halo Shop only does consoles. But in that same neighborhood, you can find a number of PC game shops, so no worries.

At any of these shops, you can have virtually any modern console system modified so it can play pirated game discs, or in the case of the Nintendo DS, just buying an add-on to play game roms. Feel free to bring an existing machine in, or buy one there. Only the Playstation 3 is still unhackable (perhaps more to do with the Blu-Ray discs needed rather than the machine itself), so if you want a PS3, you’re paying $60 USD/game (pretty much normal price in the US)

To have your existing system modified (modded) will cost between $50 and $80, depending on the system, but whether it’s a PSP, DS, Game Boy Advance, Xbox 360 (I don’t think anyone is selling Xbox 1’s anymore), Nintendo Wii, PC, or Playstation 2, you can pirate games for $2 USD or less.

You will want to make sure your shop is good though, just as you would any electronics or home repairman in the US. X-Game and Halo Shop are fairly reputable, and though I don’t trust them 100%, I still purchase from them.

Blu-Ray and HD Movies:

There is an irony that HDTVs have been super popular in Vietnam for the last couple of years, and yet there are no HDTV channels. I did hear last month that a few are available if you buy a $300 box, but yeah….right. And you can’t get international feeds. I imagine though, if someone finds a way to tap into international sports and movie HD feeds, there will be a paying audience. People only pay about $3/month for cable, but I would definitely front $10-$15 month for good HD programming.

The second irony is that no one is watching movies in HD either. Well, a very few select, yet, all the TVs being sold today are HD. You go to the showroom and they’ll show an HD feed to wow you, yet you’ll never watch that at home.

The select few who know how to watch HD movies either have Blu-Ray through a Playstation 3 (unlikely) or pirate (ding ding ding!)

I recently found out about this stuff myself, after checking out Halo Shop for games, I saw they also sell HD movies: 10K for Blu-Ray quality movies (Some are in 720P, others are in 1080P) transferred to your hard drive. I can tell they don’t rip them from legit copies, they just download (filenames are similar to what you see on scene/torrent releases). You could just download them yourself, but it definitely is cost and time effective to just get them from a shop.

To start with your HD movie piracy, you can get a Media Tank (see below and click to go there) for from $200 to $400 USD.

Media tanks are basically media consoles. They can play any format and hook up to your TV. They also have DTS/Dolby Digital out connectors to hook up to your home theater setup. Unfortunately, they don’t do stereo out for some reason, so you can’t just hook it up to your TV. It’s either home theater or no sound.

These also, despite their not-so-cheap price, don’t come with hard drives. You can use a USB drive of your own, or buy one at Halo Shop (or any other PC shop). Keep in mind that most movies will be 7 gigs or larger so even a 300 gig hard drive will only hold 40 movies. The price for High Definition….

Bring the hard drive, not the entire machine, to the shop, and select which movies you want transferred in. Come back the next day, and time to watch movies!

But you don’t necessarily have to buy a media tank and home theater setup. What I’ve been planning is to hook up my laptop (virtually all laptops have VGA output) to my HDTV. Then, with movies transferred to my USB hard drive and hooked up to my laptop, play the movies from the laptop, with video connecting to the HDTV. For sound, sound jack connected to stereo speakers.

High definition, with less extra cost, and no home theater (5.1 speakers and receiver) audio setup required.

There’s a dedicated online community to HD movies and hardware at http://hdvietnam.com if you want to learn more:

Primer on HDTV pricing:

You can get a brand-name quality HDTV from the likes of Samsung and LG for:

• 32 inch 720P: $420 USD, 7 Million VND
• 37 inch 720P: $620 USD, 10.5 Million VND
• 37 inch 1080P: $700 USD, 12 Million VND
• 42 inch 1080P: $1000 USD, 17 Million VND

For shops, try Thien Hoa (http://www.thienhoaelectric.com.vn/) in Saigon or a price engine like Aha.vn (http://www.aha.vn/sanpham/tivi-lcd-plasma_dm74.html)

For non-Pirates:

In all this piracy, I did forget to mention that if you want to be legit, there are options, perhaps not so much in Vietnam, but through online like Play-Asia:

Play-Asia is quote good on pricing, and offer free shipping to Vietnam for many items. The only problem is that expect one month delivery time- this isn’t Play Asia’s fault, however, blame Vietnamese customs. (Yes, I’ve purchased with them. I don’t know about trying to ship hardware in, or even game accessories, like joysticks, you might face a tax on those. Both for games and discs, I have been ok.)

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