That sucks!

DenverDon

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Where did you buy them from? I have bought most of mine from Uncut dvds and havnt had a problem. Perhaps the place you got them from might be knocking them off?

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Interestingly they are PAL versions and have printed on them the australian distributor, eg. calvista australia pty ltd.

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I'm afraid that your DVD is pirated version,
I bought some of pirate version of private titles from
local store (in Indonesia), for just about US$5 each.

Them only have scene selections and play movie.
No special feature or bonus material.

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Just for clarification's sake, Plastic Case = Amaray Case, case like any normal mainstream DVD comes in.

There are three different types of Private DVDs available here in Australia.

1) NTSC discs in Plastic DVD cases. - These are Identical in every way to those you will buy from Fivestar, ADE, Laser's Edge or any other US retailer I've had experience with and what forum members are familiar with. All extras, etc.

2) PAL discs in Plastic DVD cases. - Exactly the same as above, Except they're in PAL. These are the ones available in Europe, from erodvd, and presumably from Orgazmik, etc. These have all extras, etc.

3) PAL discs in Heavy Card, Clamshell DVD cases. - These are the cut ones. They have pretty much all of the extra materiels cut out of them, and may even have some content cut.

The first two types of discs are imported from Overseas suppliers. The third are manufactured locally under licence from Private. Both are fine. Both are equally A-OK.

The third type are the ones we're talking about here. Here is the story about them:

The people (Stell Bay/Cal Vista Australia (no idea if they have any connection to the US Cal Vista) with the local licence are the same people that have been bringing out the videos locally under licence for years. Unfortunately the DVDs undergo a real screwjob for some reason.

All extra materials are stripped out. No Reports, No Cast Bios, No Trailers. On Virtualia titles there are no "virtual sex" features.

On multi-disc sets, you instead recieve a single DVD. For the Private Life of Series, you only recieve the first disc with no way of getting the second. For the Annual-Comp discs, like Millennium, Odyssey 2001, Sex Non-Stop rather then recieving "2 videos on one disc" as Private usually puts out, the 2 VHS volumes are sold as two separate full-priced DVDs. Gladiator comes as a single disc (with a little sticker saying :special extended version" lol).

So how can you, the Australian consumer, avoid these shitty legal-but-stripped-down discs? Well the people behind the counters in the Adult Shops have no idea. I've often seen in Club X they have both types of PAL discs side by side, even the same title, as they get their discs from various suppliers at various times. The only real way to make sure you're getting the full, unmangled versions are to make sure the packaging is a plastic case. This is easy if you're buying off the shelf, but more difficult buying via mail-order.

I'd personally recommend that if you're willing to buy mail order, you may as well buy from a retailer active on ADT. If your DVD player can handle NTSC, you can buy from pretty much any US or Euro retailer. If you need PAL titles, you may as well buy from erodvd.nl (where I am getting Privates from ATM, cheap and free shipping, and also Orgazmik has a very good reputation here .

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