Tag Archives: piracy

Buying Blu-Ray (HD) Movies in Vietnam [More on Piracy]

Today, I want to share about the world of network media tanks, getting HD-quality movies on the cheap, and how to make this all happen. I won’t talk too much about the situation of piracy, having discussed those in detail in other articles. I also won’t get too technical about the discussion, just what 99% of the people reading this need to know to get things done.

The lowdown: getting HD movies in Vietnam can be quite affordable. Will these movies be the exact same quality as buying a Blu-Ray disc in the US? No. But pretty close for most concerning eyes (if you’re reading this article here of all places, you probably cannot tell the difference. I don’t even know if I can, for that matter, and I have a HD Player and Movies for my Xbox 360)

Getting movies basically gets down to getting a player for them (media tank), the movies (movie copy service), and of course, the TV.

Buying Movies:

3 Steps:

Buy a Media Tank
Buy a Hard Drive to Attach to Media Tank
Buy Movies

Step 1, Buy a Media Tank:

A media tank is like a DVD Player or VCR. You connect it to your TV and it has the ability to play media. I have a WD TV hooked up to a Seagate 1.5 TB Drive. If you want to know more scroll to the bottom of post.

For a full list of Media Tanks available at Halo Shop in Saigon, see here: Media Tank List, Halo Shop. I generally recommend them for any purchases. They can speak English and they’re not so full of BS so you can take their advice for an easier process.

If you’re from Hanoi, sorry, I don’t know of any places in Hanoi, though I’m sure they exist- ask a local Home Theater shop, and they should be able to point you in the right direction.

A few more notes: Don’t bother getting HD movies unless you have an HDTV. There will be no benefit. Also, use an HDMI cable to connect the Media Tank to the HD TV. HDMI Cables should cost less than $10 USD- don’t be tricked into paying more. Lastly, if you’re not going to hook up a 5.1 (or 7.1/8.1/etc.) sound system to your TV, you should make sure the audio will be ok if you connect the Media Tank to your TV. Just ask “Can I use this Media Tank with my TV speakers?” With the WD TV, this isn’t a problem unless you are playing DTS movies, but scroll to the end of this post for more on that.

Step 2, Buy a Hard Drive to Attach to Media Tank:

You can buy these anywhere. I would suggest getting a package deal when you get your Media Tank, minimum 1TB Hard Drive, get 2TB if you can afford it. Remember, movies are 5-10 GB each, so a 1TB Hard Drive will store only 200 movies. Tank + Hard Drive may cost $400 to $500 depending on what you buy. Sounds expensive, but the movies themselves are extremely cheap.

Step 3, Buy Movies:

There are basically 3 types of content: 480P (DVD quality), 720P (Hi Def), and 1080P (Bad ass Hi Def). You, for practical purposes, want 720P content. If you really think you need 1080P, read the section about buying a TV below. I do have a 32” 1080P TV, but I also sit less than 3 feet away from it.

One other thing to consider is that not that many movies are available in 1080P here, so not necessarily worth the extra cash.

There are two places that I consider:

ChepPhim.Net: 199/19 Duong (Street) 3/2 F11 District 10, TPHCM. Movie List, ChepPhim.Net
Halo Shop: 82 Pasteur, District 1, TPHCM. Movie List, Halo Shop

ChepPhim.net is cheap, fast, and has much more content available compared to Halo Shop. You can get 1TB copied for about $10 USD in less than two days. They update their movie list about twice a month and even have TV sets like Lost and Prison Break.

Buying a TV and Home Audio:

TV:

I’ll make this simple- get a 720P TV. If you really think you may want a 1080P, read this article first: 1080p Does Matter – Here’s When (Screen Size vs. Viewing Distance vs. Resolution). If you have a family or plan to share the TV with someone else, unless you are just rich, get a 720P. A bonus about having a 1080P TV, though, is that you can use it as a 1920 x 1080 PC monitor.

For the record, I have a 32” 1080P from LG, and like I said before, I have to sit less than 3 feet away from it to take full advantage of 1080p movies, of which there are few. Most video games also max out at 720P.

Retailers:

DIEN MAY CHO LON .VN (Saigon)
Thien Hoa (Saigon)
Vatgia.com (Price Engine)
Aha.vn (Price Engine)

Home Audio:

This one’s a bit tougher. I can’t really help here in terms of where to buy in Vietnam or what to buy. Try HD Vietnam if you can read Vietnamese. Otherwise, stick with the stereo TV speakers.

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About the Western Digital WD TV: [Quick Review and Tips]

I have the WD TV, the original version.

Some notes on it:

It’s cheap. I expect the original can be had for about $100 USD now in Vietnam. I don’t think the WD TV is sold at Halo Shop anymore.
Supports most video formats, but surprisingly, not .FLV or .WMV. I don’t use it for audio or pictures.
Overall, it’s okay. Not great. But a solid value for $100. The HDMI connection on mine is a bit loose, so sometimes there’s no signal, and the remote can be frustratingly spotty. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the machine won’t turn on or off, even when the remove is right next to the sensor. Once the machine starts recognizing the remote that particular day, everything is great.
Getting the new version (Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player) or the original (WD TV Live) is fine for most purposes. The 2 main additions in the WD TV Live are 1) DTS support and 2) Networking support. Networking support means you can hook it up to another computer and stream stuff rather than have to connect a Hard Drive to it. The DTS support, for me, is a bit more important, because many movies that I’ve purchased here are DTS-only and therefore result in no audio when using the original WD TV. There is a fix – you’ll need this to convert those movies with the PopCorn MKV AudioConverter (along with Tutorial for converting audio tracks with HeartWare MKV Audio Converter).
There’s an issue with some 1080P movies on the WD TV with movies that have too many Reference (Ref) frames. This is where we get a bit technical. If you run into this issue, you’ll have to re-encode the entire movie, which is a two day process. If you get a 1080P movie that seems to stutter, try to find a 720P version. Or get a different media tank. If you really need help with this, you can find the solution on forums online. My hint: I used a combination of MediaInfo and RipBot264 to fix The Dark Knight. I haven’t fixed any other movies yet.

Links:

Official Firmware: WD TV Product Update – you can probably ask whomever you buy this from to install it for you if you are non-technical, but it also isn’t so difficult.
Unofficial Firmware: B-RAD (Don’t worry about using this unless you want to spend a lot of time on techie stuff. A note about the unofficial firmware is that I still can’t it to work right with all the extra functionality people have developed for it)
More talk about Firmware and Stuff: WDTV Forum Homebrew / Custom Firmware

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Sorry if this post got a bit crazy, but hopefully it’s useful to someone out there. If you have any questions or want to send in your own recommendations and tips, please leave a comment!

The Escapist : Sony Invades Vietnam with PlayStations

X-Men Origins: Wolverine [REVIEW - Spoiler Free]

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If you’re not aware, the big news regarding the piracy scene and movie industry lately was the Internet release of an early workprint of Wolverine, which won’t be released in US theaters until May. The workprint’s basically close to DVD quality, but missing some effects, perhaps 15 minutes of footage, and doesn’t have its own music in there- I read a comment on VCD Quality that said the music was taken from Transformers and is in there as a placeholder, a common practice for works in progress.

As someone’s already been fired for reviewing this, I don’t want to stress how much of a pirate I am, but I will say that I did argue whether I should download it. I had read an article a couple of weeks ago that discussed Gabe Newell’s (he’s the head guy at Valve, makers of the Half-Life franchise and the Steam gaming service) thoughts on piracy, and he felt that a lot of piracy comes from people just not being able to get what they want when they want it. An example he gave was with regional releases- if you’re in the UK, you might have to wait an extra few months for its official release (even if you’re willing to pay) there when you could just pirate the US release right now.

This is what influenced my decision. I didn’t know if I was so into viewing a unfinished version, but then I looked at Megastar’s release calendar, and you don’t see Wolverine listed at all (movies are often listed 2-4 months in advance, so it’s not that Megastar lists later). Some movies come to Vietnam theaters quite quickly; Watchmen came here one week after the US release. But others take quite a while; Dark Knight came 6 weeks after the US release, and Slumdog Millionaire is finally coming here at the end of April, over 4 months after I watched it in the US, 5 months after it was first released in the US, and 1 month after it will have been released on DVD. And a good quality bootleg of that has been available since January, thus greatly negating the motivation for moviegoers here to want to wait it out.

Taking those into consideration, and some positive impressions of the workprint I’d read, I decided to check it out.

I liked it. Wolverine really surprised me, and this is coming from someone who had no particular inclination to go watch it before this. I really thought it would be a dud.

I don’t want to go into extensive details or give you my rating for it, since it wasn’t a final version, but here are some notes:

The music, even if it was taken from Transformers, fit the movie well enough. Wasn’t a problem. So I imagine the final version with the real music will be good.
Intro parts of the movie to introduce the character were very well done.
Liev Shreiber as Victor Creed was a great character. He’s fleshed out well here, while in the comics and cartoon, I tend to think of him more as a dumb Wolverine knockoff.
It’s cool to see the partly finished special effects. You can learn a little bit more about how movies are made. I know that some movies have released green screen versions of their movies (Sin City), but maybe this is something more and more action movies should consider doing.
The plot is much more complete and well thought out than I was expecting. It made me want to rewatch X-Men and think about how this all connects, and there are a lot of appearances from other comic characters.There’s also an emotional depth that I think is deeper than in any of the X-Men movies.

Knowing that this version isn’t complete and there’s potentially more footage actually excites me. Instead of watching this and thinking, well, I’ve already seen it, no need to see it in theaters, I think of this version as more of an extended trailer. So while before this pirate release, I really wasn’t interested in the movie, now I definitely want to see it whenever it comes out to Vietnam. Will go invite the team at work as well, I think they’d really enjoy it.

See the official trailer below:

Update, May 18, 2009: Ended up seeing Wolverine in its premiere weekend at Vincom in Hanoi. Since I originally posted this, I, like Jin and [[Tu]], now believe the leak may have been a PR hoax. Of course, I am not sure why (why release an almost-final version instead of a half finished version with promise) or how they could get away with such a thing (think of their partners), but Wolverine has done pretty well at the box office, so maybe it was quite brilliant. The ironic thing is that Fox initially said that the leaked movie was quite different from the final one, and that’s what made me see it, knowing I could see an even better version once it came out to theaters. The reality is, the two versions are essentially identical. I wasn’t going to see it in theates once I found this out, but ended up giving up my money when I was hanging out with a friend in Hanoi, and there was nothing else decent we could see. In the end, I did like the movie- I gave it a 7/10

My Torrent Guide for You

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Yes, as I have said before, I am a digital pirate.

I won’t try to defend myself. In some ways and interpretations, it’s stealing, and I admit to it. At the same time, I do buy stuff, though much less so since I’ve moved to Vietnam and been surrounded by piracy along with more limited work wages. But still, if you take any machine that I have, whether it be game console like the XBox 360, or DVD player, I guarantee that I have bought at least the average amount (also called the “attach rate”) that a customer will buy for that machine, and most of the time, much more so. I’ve bought many games, dvds, and even music cds that I never opened or played.

Torrents do have its more “gray” uses, though. Like watching basketball when it is impossible to do so in your country (Vietnam). Or checking out old tv shows or games that aren’t really sold anymore. Moving on….

Torrents, What are and How to:

A torrent is basically a file that points to other files. Almost like a map. If you download a torrent, you actually haven’t downloaded anything, just directions to some files. You actually need something that can figure out how to read those directions, like uTorrent.

Download µTorrent – Powerful BitTorrent Client

utorrent

If you’ve ever downloaded files with your browser, think of uTorrent as a download manager for torrent files. It knows how to find all the files you want. I don’t want to get too detailed on how to set it up, but here are some general tips once you’ve installed it.

Setting a download location:

Once you have uTorrent installed, go to the menu bar (up top), click on Options and then Preferences. (You can also click Ctrl-P).

Under directories, choose a location for your files (this is where the actual files will be stored. Remember this directory. Click OK to save.

Back to the uTorrent interface, look at the bottom, right:

You will find some funny numbers with D: and U:

D: means your download rate, U: means your upload rate. Normally, if you don’t change these settings, uTorrent will use all your bandwidth, which could upset your housemates, wife, etc., and interfere with normal internet usage. You can adjust these by right clicking on the D: to adjust the download rate (I suggest 10-20 kB/s) and then U: for the upload (match the download rate if possible).

Oops, one more thing. When you download torrent files from your browser, make sure when you get prompted if you want to download or open them, open them. Downloading them will do nothing, so open them like I show you below. If you have uTorrent installed, uTorrent will automatically handle it for you from there.

Torrents, Where to find:

Here are my recommendations, the sites I use:

General/Everything:

From movies to music to ebooks to games to tv shows. If you’re looking for movies try axxo or klaxxon in the search- results with those tend to be legit. The Pirate Bay is likely the most famous torrent site out there, but I much prefer Mininova and BtJunkie. You can also try Demonoid, but it’s not easy to get an account there.

Anime:

BitTorrent @ AnimeSuki.com

Comics:

Games:

GamesTorrents

Sports:

Other:

Legaltorrents.com

Last Notes:

Since many torrents link to files that are considered piracy or illegal, you do have to think about whether you’re ok with that. Depending on where you live, there may be repercussions. Mike, for examples, does not torrent anymore now that the various industries have started suing users. If you want to make sure there’s no chance of legal consequences, just don’t torrent. Simple.

How to be a Digital Pirate in Vietnam

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Image by Will Lion via Flickr

(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.)