King of the Hill

[Blaze_Chamberlin]

Are these seasons by Amazon legit? This list Amazon as the seller and deliverer of said product.

https://www.amazon.com/King-of-the-H...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[Chaz05]

Yes, seasons 7-13 were released by Olive Films about ten years ago. I believe they are now OOP.

[Blaze_Chamberlin]

Originally Posted by Chaz05

Yes, seasons 7-13 were released by Olive Films about ten years ago. I believe they are now OOP.

There have been so many knockoffs, though.

[Sillydillo]

If it says Amazon's the seller it might be worth chancing, they have a pretty good return policy if it ends up being a fake.

[Vanguard]

Best chance at a legit version if it comes from Amazon, and not a bad price too.

Would love to see photos of legitimate copies of the DVDs of seasons 7-12. 1-6 are easy, as legit Fox copies are slim cases in a box. Knock offs look like the Olive releases in full size DVD cases.

[hansolo350]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Would love to see photos of legitimate copies of the DVDs of seasons 7-12. 1-6 are easy, as legit Fox copies are slim cases in a box. Knock offs look like the Olive releases in full size DVD cases.

Unfortunately, I can't take photos right now and I might have gotten rid of my bootlegs, but in person, I think it's easy to spot the bad print quality of bootlegs without even opening them. Both the colours and the resolution of the prints were bad on the bootlegs I saw. Of course, online sellers typically just use the good quality stock photo, so this isn't very helpful.

The best way to tell the bootlegs apart from the legit copies is if you can get a photo of the artwork on the printed side of the DVDs. There is a black ring with Olive's and Fox's copyright information that's near the outside edge of the discs. On a legit copy, the disc artwork extends past the black ring whereas on the bootlegs I had, the artwork ended at the black ring.

I definitely think if someone really only wants legit copies, they should be looking exclusively at used copies. The legit copies I bought during the pandemic came from a public library.

[Sillydillo]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Would love to see photos of legitimate copies of the DVDs of seasons 7-12. 1-6 are easy, as legit Fox copies are slim cases in a box. Knock offs look like the Olive releases in full size DVD cases.

There absolutely exist legit copies of the Fox sets in standard DVD cases. 1-4 were sold in a bundle at Walmart for a while and are pretty common in that form.



5-6 must have gotten an issue at some point, though they seem uncommon. I believe they got a dual pack release in a box like this?



I've seen similar standard-case reissues for a handful of the other box-set Fox DVDs, like Family Guy.

[hansolo350]

These have been out of print for so long that it is safe to assume any sealed copy is just a bootleg. A season 13 blu-ray is actually likely to be the real thing though, as I don't think there are bootlegs of it (or at least there weren't when I bought mine a couple of years ago).

[ps3bd_owner]

If they can't do a genuine HD Remaster, there's always the other option: AI Upscale.

It can look really good if they take care of it.

Anyway, I'm on Season 2 and loving it. If they'd make B&B episodes without the reactions I'd want to watch that version (not a big fan of the reactions, tbh).

[Sillydillo]

Originally Posted by ps3bd_owner

If they'd make B&B episodes without the reactions I'd want to watch that version (not a big fan of the reactions, tbh).

I'm fairly sure the original Mike Judge Collection DVD sets are basically what you'd want. They're basically just straight episodes, with a few of the music videos/reactions included separately. They couldn't get a lot of the music video rights so they separated the episodes from the music videos for the DVDs.

[DawnShadow]

Originally Posted by ps3bd_owner

If they can't do a genuine HD Remaster, there's always the other option: AI Upscale.

It can look really good if they take care of it.

Anyway, I'm on Season 2 and loving it. If they'd make B&B episodes without the reactions I'd want to watch that version (not a big fan of the reactions, tbh).

There's HD masters on Disney+ that look really good, they get better as the series progresses.

[mikezilla2]

Originally Posted by DawnShadow

There's HD masters on Disney+ that look really good, they get better as the series progresses.

Where Do they Start ?

[Sillydillo]

Whipped up a comparison of the counterfeit/bootleg KOTH sets:



Few other notes:
Seasons 1-4 are easy and safe to get through the 4-season Walmart set,
I don't think fakes exist of the season 13 Blu-ray,
I've personally never seen a fake which has those little adhesive security tags in the case, but most legit copies of 5/6 seem to have them. If it has an adhesive tag in it, it's prooooobably real.

[Region_unlocked]

Originally Posted by Sillydillo

[Show spoiler]Whipped up a comparison of the counterfeit/bootleg KOTH sets:



Few other notes:
Seasons 1-4 are easy and safe to get through the 4-season Walmart set,
I don't think fakes exist of the season 13 Blu-ray,
I've personally never seen a fake which has those little adhesive security tags in the case, but most legit copies of 5/6 seem to have them. If it has an adhesive tag in it, it's prooooobably real.

What a frankly bizarre thing for a bootlegger to do. Why did they go to the trouble of recreating the 20th logo? Surely that's an asset you can pull from Google images. It's not going to be a vector or anything, but at that size even a nice large high contrast jpeg would probably look fine. It might look a little soft but at least the font would be correct. The weird places they put their effort confuse me.

[Vanguard]

Thanks for the comparison photos Sillydillo!

Hansolo350 was spot on about the black ring on the discs themselves. I checked my 7-12 DVDs, and the season 7 disc has the artwork stop at the black ring. Whereas 8-12 have the artwork extend beyond the black ring. Coupled with the awful print quality on the season 7 discs, its clear that 7 is a bootleg. Happy that 8-12 are legit, considering I got them from eBay in a mix of sealed and opened states.

EDIT: Upon further inspection, I think all are bootlegs. The flipper cases only have a single disc and off-center. The rest have center hubs that match the fake ones. In the trash they go, bummer.

[Sillydillo]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Thanks for the comparison photos Sillydillo!

Hansolo350 was spot on about the black ring on the discs themselves. I checked my 7-12 DVDs, and the season 7 disc has the artwork stop at the black ring. Whereas 8-12 have the artwork extend beyond the black ring. Coupled with the awful print quality on the season 7 discs, its clear that 7 is a bootleg. Happy that 8-12 are legit, considering I got them from eBay in a mix of sealed and opened states.

It's worth noting that on some of the bootlegs, the artwork still appears to extend beyond the black ring like real copies - the season 8 bootleg in the comparison, for instance, has artwork extending beyond the black ring. It's a good sign, but I wouldn't assume it's real just because the art extends past the black ring.

[Blaze_Chamberlin]

Did Olive lose the license or ?

[Sillydillo]

Originally Posted by Blaze_Chamberlin

Did Olive lose the license or ?

Presumably. They're no longer in print and haven't been for a while, though I'm unsure as to exactly when they went OOP.

[Wezzo]

Olive Films went out of business altogether.

[Sillydillo]

Alright, so I bit the bullet on your guys' behalf and ordered two of the Olive Films KOTH seasons that were sold and shipped by Amazon.

And the outcome... one is real, and one is a bootleg?

The copy of season nine I received was authentic. The case used was accurate, the discs are dual layer, everything checks out as far as I can tell.

Season 11 is laughably bad. Like it is the most painfully fake bootleg of a real release I've seen. They're single layer. One of the discs wouldn't even play!

Not sure why this is, but I suspect it has to do with Amazon mixing their own product with that of third party sellers? Ordering shipped and sold from Amazon isn't inherently less likely to be fake, but you can likely take solace in Amazon's lenient return policy at the very least.

Took some direct comparison shots with a real copy before I return it to Amazon. Enjoy!

[Show spoiler]

Season 9 - authentic copy

[Show spoiler]

Season 11 - fake

[Show spoiler]

Both included Olive Films inserts. Content printed is identical, though the fake bears much worse image quality.
Being that this insert includes a tear-away mail-in to join Olive Films' mailing list, the authentic one uses a sort of texture comparable to a mail-in postcard from a magazine, and has tear-away perforations. The fake one just uses a folded piece of glossy paper.

[Show spoiler]

Spine comparison. Real left, fake right. Note the differences in print quality and the "DVD Video" logo.

[Show spoiler]

Season 11, disc 1. Real left, fake right.

[Show spoiler]

Disc 2. Real left, fake right. Yes, that black discoloring on Bill is part of the disc. Yes, they forgot to remove the rest of the dog's hat. Yes, the disc has blue ink splattered beyond the label.

[Show spoiler]

Differences in font, logos, etc. Real uses a bold font for "An Olive Films Release" and says "20th Century Fox Television" where fake uses standard "20th Century Fox" logo.