Last night I went to a get together with a couple of friends from the Multimedia TAFE course a while back and spent a bit of time playing old Dreamcast games, Playing poker with Skittles (because we didn't have any chips), and watching some DVDs. Some of the DVDs we watched were some of these dodgy Taiwanese imports and while the films were not at good (the movies we watched were Hitman, and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem/AVPR) we did find something on AVPR that actually made me want to import more dodgy Taiwanese DVDs.
Usually I'm someone who would prefer to go legit with most of the stuff I want. A good majority of stuff I play, listen to, and watch comes from legit sources because usually the quailty is better, the media most legit material is on (pressed CDs and DVDs) is more reliable than the media most pirated material is on (burnable CDs and DVDs), and because I'm a believe of the idea that if you like something or are going to like something it is better to buy it than pirate it because a) that is part of the reason why these people have put in a lot of time and money to make this stuff, and b) because part of how these studios and publisher measure how successful a thing is is by seeing how much money it makes back, and if a film, album, or game makes a good amount of money back then the studios and publishers start looking at producing more material like that.
That said their is something you are missing out on from some dodgy Taiwanese DVDs. It's not that crappy image quality, nor is it the crud menus they've put together, or even the fact that they don't have any from of surround sound audio. It's the Engrish subtitles. As we watched AVPR we had the "English" subtitle on for some of it, where we got was some Engrish gold. Best bits of Engrish was the subtitled alternative to "this is not a democracy" that went for a couple of lines, and the scene where Reiko Aylesworth's character returns home at the start and everyone is happy but a subtitle come up for Aylesworth's character stating "I wish I had died" or something like that as she hugs here daughter.
This is probably the only good reason to go for some of these dodgy Taiwanese DVDs. Previous good examples of this have been the Engrish subtitles to Stars Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (or as the subtitles call it, "Backstroke of the West") and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. These are just great because they are ridiculous. But what is kind of a worry though is that this kind of ridiculousness is now coming to genuine releases thanks to outsourcing. India and Malaysia are now doing the subtitle for a number of releases and are coming up with similarly funny results.
Today's links are: