The Day The Earth Stood Still 2008 on Blu Feb 5 in Thailand.

[steve_dave]

I was in Thailand last August visiting my family and the BD market is pretty slim. Not many Thai nationals want to pay the premium for Blu-ray Discs just enthusiasts with home theaters.

With that said, when I visited the Boomerang store, I found many of the titles were either imported US or Hong Kong imported discs. So far, only Universal makes Thai local market Blu-ray Discs. Every other studio is a foreign import adding an even larger premium to the price.

In fact, the cheapest BDs were $30 US and that was in August. Fox almost always releases a Thai local DVD of recent films to combat piracy. This Thai local disc only has a Thai language track to cut down on costs. Sadly, the Fox disc will sell for around $5 US whle the street bootleg disc sells for around $1 US. With VideoCDs, its different...VCDs are the lower cost alternative to DVDs and so they can offer two versions: English with Thai subs or Thai only. These are also priced to compete with pirate copies.

This copy of The Day The Earth Stood Still on Blu-ray Disc is the Hong Kong disc since the price is under 1,200 baht. That's about $35 US for the privilege of getting it early.