King of the Hill/Olive Films release

[hunterxhunter21]

I just picked up a copy of KOTH season 10. I purchased it on eBay. It was maybe 4-5 bucks less then Amazon, where I’ve purchased my previous season.

I immediately noticed differences between the season 10 I just purchased from eBay vs 7-9 from Amazon.

- no insert included in 10, 7-9 had one
- the cases for 7-9 are very film and smooth, 10’s case is a little flimsy and has wrinkles on the plastic
- the letter and images are not as sharp on 10
- the lettering on the disc are also not as sharp
- disc 1 in season 10 also looks like the artwork was printed twice. It looks like it was printed, then reprinted, but the first print can still be seen
- season 10 also had the wrapper stick to the spine of the case, which wasn’t the case with 7-9

I checked then contents of 10, it seems to play fine. The only difference I saw was the first piracy into has the logo on a blue background vs black for 7-9.

Did The quality of Olive Films release nose dive at some point? Did I end up with a very good looking fake? There seem to be a lot on eBay. It’s almost night and day the quality comparing the disc, case, and art.

[SillyG]

There are some sellers on eBay spruiking the complete series for as little as US$50. I strongly suspect that these are bootlegs, even though they superficially seem legit (that is seasons 1-6 bearing the FOX logo, and 7-13 the Olive films logo on the binder etc.).

Based on your description (and the fact that it was the only season purchased on eBay), I have little doubt that your copy of "season 10" is a bootleg. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority who have been buying these fakes have been giving positive feedback on eBay, which isn't helping those of us looking to complete our collections.

I do intend to finally import seasons 6-12 soon (I already have 13 on Blu, which I bought out of fear that it was out-of-print), but I'm torn between getting the U.S. or the U.K. versions. If the U.K. versions are NTSC encoded, I think I'll opt for the U.S. releases, but if the U.K. versions are PAL like my Australian season 1-5 releases, then I'll probably opt for PAL due to the extra resolution. I'm already used to the PAL sped-up versions and my untrained senses can't really see/hear the difference.

It's a shame that seasons 11 and 12 hadn't been released on Blu-ray as well as they appear to have been done in native HD (albeit in 4:3 aspect ratio). I tried reaching out to a local distributor some years ago (as they usually specialise in more niche releases) but they never replied.

[nymets138]

If anyone has a copy of Season 7 on DVD they would be willing to sell, it's the only one that I'm still missing. Thought I had one last week but it ended up being a bootleg.