Saw my first HD-DVD bootlegs today!!

[Greenmatiz2]

I was walking through the Youngsan Electronics Market in Seoul, South Korea and I saw my first HD-DVD bootlegs!

Just a few titles: Batman Begins, Superman Returns, and Serenity. Nothing on BR, but the owner of the shop said it's coming.

I was very sceptical -- the quality looked pretty good, but he was running it on a 17" Samsung laptop. He was playing a demo of Superman. The subs were definitely not movie-screen subs. They didn't look like high-def-quality subs, either -- kind of like standard-def pasted over the movie or something. They were stretched funny, but very readable. Do subs look like that on HD-DVD? I'm guessing they normally don't (they don't on my BR), so they were probably "added-in" somehow.

I tried to snap a photo of the boxes, but the guy wouldn't let me. I'll be sneaking back there soon, and try again when he's not looking (I have a camera in my phone).

I did get a look at the disks inside, though. They were on 15gb Ri-Data HD-DVD-R disks that had no labels. The boxes had color-copied labels of HD-DVD movie boxes on them (look like cheap printed scans stuck in the sleaves).

Does anyone have any idea if these HD-DVD movies could fit on a 15gb disk if it were ripped?

They wanted 10,000 won each for them (about $10). No thanks.

It's worth noting that HD-DVD (and even BR) players in Korea are really expensive, unless you buy the Xbox360 add-on, which is about $180 still. A full HD-DVD/BR combo player is still well over $1,400 US. In fact, I haven't seen anything that plays only HD-DVD (other than some computers with built-in drives that cost over $2000 anyway). BR is more popular here, although still very much a novelty item. You can't get a Korean-made BR player for less than $1,200, even though Samsung and LG are Korean companies (the PS3 is due out next month).