The first time I traveled outside the western part of the world, I was (naively or not) surprised by the sheer amount of bootleg tapes sold in regular stores. Same with DVD when that time came around.
Back in the 90s Singapore was such a big market for this that it acted as the major driver for motivating globally synchronized releases. i.e. for Reader's Digest magazine* in the US in 1995 if you did not release it on the same day in Singapore it would be easily available in pirated form within days, removing any ability to make money in that market for the legitimate product.
In UK pubs circa 2000 it was notorious that certain people would approach your table to sell you bootleg DVDs, and that if you indulged them you'd then get access to their "special" selection.
* And yes, that example is totally serious.
Sometimes they’d disappear for a while and you’d have to work with your existing collection or find a new guy.
But that was pre ubiquitous-ish high speed internet.
I think that made the tapes read-only.
VHS copy protection was mostly some flavour of Macrovision (at least in Canada).
What’s interesting is how much the timing of official releases shaped all this. If you had to wait months for a cinema run or home video, the “street version” was too tempting to pass up.
What about DivX/XviD?
VCDs had broad hardware support, and were more mainstream.
I used to travel around Southeast Asia a bit, and whenever I was in Hong Kong, I'd load up on VCD movies at mainstream stores like HMV.
I still have VCD copies of The Incredibles and On Her Majesty's Secret Service I bought at HMV.
At least this is my recollection.
At least this is my recollection. <shivers/> the really bad ol' days
This is still not easy without piracy, at least for liveTV.
Svip•6h ago
thunderbong•6h ago
I was only familiar with the second definition -
- a briefly stated and usually trivial fact
happymellon•3h ago
reaperducer•2h ago
What's the use of the word "usage" when its use is clearly to just say "use?"