Paramount Germany (via Universal) are releasing the first five seasons of
NCIS as an
Amazon.de Exclusive on 18 January 2018. It's a 29-disc set for the relatively bargain price of €99,99 (€84,03 without VAT). The only other release of
NCIS was a US/Australia Blu-ray of The Twelfth Season. I'm finally going to start watching the show on Blu-ray, after it has yet again been named the
most watched drama...in the world.
Amusingly, when that Season 12 Blu-ray was released back in 2015, I resolved to start watching the show, as I don't mind these sorts of highly digestible crime drama series (like
Law & Order), so I went to eBay looking for a Season 1-11 DVD bundle. There I found one, for a reasonable price of $111, from a reliable seller in the US, using a stock photo, but registering under the correct UPC (there are loads of DVD configurations for this show in the USA). What I received were eleven individually wrapped slipbox seasons with slimline DVD cases. I popped in the first disc of the first season, and the menus loaded and I selected the first episode. As I often do, I went to check the subtitles with my remote, when, to my surprise, Chinese subtitles appeared, and even though English subtitles were also available, neither were listed in the menus, and I grew concerned. I looked further into the menus and the audio commentary on the pilot, which was listed on the box and in the menus, was not present. A check of the discs in my PC confirmed that all six discs were DVD-5 bootlegs, with suspicious mint marks on the data sides, and a closer look at the packaging revealed it was a not-that-obvious color facsimile, right down to the cardboard slipbox.
The next thing I went to do was to check then then-newest Eleventh Season set. I was totally stunned to find it was an
even better bootleg, with all the correct subtitles, extras and audio commentaries in the right places, but still on DVD-5 media, and with suspicious mint marks. I fully believe 9 out of 10 people would have been fooled by these discs, and I would never have known had the first season not erroneously featured Chinese and English subtitles (the legitimate R1 DVD of The First Season has no subtitling). For both seasons, everything had been reproduced in minute detail, including disc art, barcodes and copyright information. The discs did not look like DVD-R media, and as I recall, were not read as DVD-R by my computer, either
Of course, I did what I could, and got in touch with CBS/Paramount. Long story short, these people did not care, even though this seller was selling several of these bundles that were high-quality bootlegs. And not helping matters is that the eBay e-mails I saved do not contain the member name of the seller (since they never had to message me), so I have no idea if the account was ever terminated. But even now, there are listings for that bundle on eBay for shockingly low prices, and I would have to guess these are fakes.
Of course, I bought the Season 12 Blu-ray on release day, and eventually, I did buy the legitimate (I hope) DVD sets from Best Buy after I was refunded, but I still haven't found the time to watch them yet. Now, I'm going to end up waiting for the Blu-ray editions from Germany! Maybe the third time is the charm, here?