Does Berjaya HVN Really Have Rights Reproducing Thomas & Friends?
Posted by ady on Wed, September 8, 2010
My son’s current favorite series are Special Agent OSO and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. He sometimes still watches Thomas & Friends. He can recognize Thomas in Toys ‘R’ Us even from the entrance a hundred meters away.
I’ve been looking high and low for high quality, and updated DVDs for him to watch in the car. Yes, it’s how we keep him relaxed inside the car instead of running around dangerously in a moving vehicle.
A few months ago, I bought original DVDs with KPDN & HEP sticker on it. They are made by Berjaya HVN. I was, however very disappointed with the quality. The DVDs contained antique videos.
Take Thomas, for example the videos are from before the intro was changed:
Disappointed, I tried downloading the videos from the Internet but I ended up being warned for downloading copyrighted materials.
For those who are observant, you will see that in the earlier seasons of Thomas & Friends the characters are non-moving dolls (only their eyes move). In newer pictures, the characters are free moving characters. An obvious observation is the kid waving to Thomas on the bridge, with a bicycle next to him.
Very Old:
Old: (more rounded edges)
New: (the kid waves, and notice the quality of props)
For those who are not familiar with Thomas, here’s a newer intro but not the latest (notice the kid on the bridge still doesn’t wave - it’s from Season 8 while current season is 13):
Here is a DVD I bought a few weeks ago, look at the year printed on the sleeve.
Looking at this you probably think the DVD contains the latest series! But no it doesn’t.
Now, HiT Entertainment’s website contains no email so I have to blog about it and hope someone will be able to discover this post.
With the bad quality of DVDs I am seriously wondering whether Berjaya HVN is really licensed to reproduce the DVDs. They are DVDs, but the quality is VCD quality.
I am disappointed. And you blame me for downloading pirated videos?
I know that I can tell whether the DVD contains the latest series but right now it’s impossible to bring along the complete printout of the list of production every time I go out. Maybe when I get an iPhone, but that’s a whole different story not for today.
And this problem is not only for Thomas & Friends. It’s the same for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Tigger & Pooh. So I haven’t been able to find any Special Agent OSO DVD locally. All of them are by Berjaya HVN - not only their own opening montage looks bad, the whole disc contains blurred videos and some even with embedded subtitles.
Or is it just because Malaysia is just behind in a few years? I find this unacceptable in the information age.
I probably should mention that the videos and images above are all copyright of Gullane (Thomas) Limited.
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