What's the deal with this website - I was looking for UNCLE and Get Smart sets and found them, along with Batman, Zorro, and others available at DVDDONKEY.COM

I get the impression these are not official series set issues, but might consider buying some series I want to see again anyway due to the low prices (I can no longer afford the 'real' issues where available).

Apparently there are no extras with the sets, and I couldn't find which country the dvd's are shipped from. I have no idea what quality of disks or recordings these dvd's might be.

Has anybody dealt with them before and know the story on this business?

Thanks for any info.

Hi Bruce,

There are several sites like this out there. You are correct...they are not official releases.

I've gotten a few things that are not available elsewhere and the quality ranges from surprisingly good (if taken from studio masters) to unwatchable (3rd or 4th generation VHS transferred to DVD). Most are obviously recorded from cable or satellite broadcasts of the show in question (if they were recorded from recent transmissions, they're likely to have that transparent station ID logo in the lower right corner of the screen). Many have made attempts to edit out the commercials...some successfully, others very sloppily.

The picture quality on most of them will never be mistaken for an official release (generally the picture quality is on a par with an older VHS tape), but there are exceptions (I've got a really first rate set of the Batman TV show) and it may be they only way to get that nostalgia fix.

Generally speaking, not the "holy grail" but not bad...

So how do these guys continue to operate without getting their butts sued?

Likely because they operate out of China or an Indonesian country where they don't enforce Int'l Copyright laws. We can buy movies like that here at the on-base bazaar which were burned in countries east of here, tho you can't find anything that directly links them to a specific country or company name, most times.

I checked the site out, and I am not impressed!

Buck Rogers complete series, $129.99, Wal-Mart price....$19.99!

I was thinking about the Batman, both UNCLE's, I Spy, Get Smart, and Zorro. The price on some of these were the only way I could afford the sets these days, and as was mentioned it's the only way to get a set of some shows.

The strange thing is, for some sets they wanted a lot more than you can buy the official releases for. A couple even showed pictures of the official release, like on The Wild, Wild West seasons (I already have the 'real' sets of these put out so far).

With the quality so iffy I probably won't take a chance on it though.

Thanks for the replies.

So how do these guys continue to operate without getting their butts sued?In addition to what Griff wrote, they also operate "under the radar" as much as possible the same as many garage kit manufacturers do; they can't get sued if the studios that own the rights to the material on those dvd's don't know they exist. The difference is, bootleg dvd's are far more cost effective to manufacture than most garage kits, and there's far greater demand, so there's a great deal more money to be made for these "pirate" vendors--money the studios don't take kindly to losing, even though they're not offering the same product.

I found a site that sold DVDs of old shows, not released, for $5.00 per DVD. If the set took 3 DVDs, it was $15, and so on. I bought some of the sets, then they got THE letter from THE lawyer, to stop! But other sites like this, live on.