Monica Petrov of Richfield wanted a DVD of a favorite old TV show, "Scarecrow and Mrs. King." So she went online, searched for a copy and bought it.
Unfortunately, the 1980s TV series has never been officially released on DVD. What Petrov got was a set of shoddily produced bootleg discs and a lesson in buying TV DVDs online.
While the TV genre is thriving on DVD, hundreds of shows still haven't been released officially. Unscrupulous sellers are filling in the gap by making and selling DVD copies of such shows to unwary buyers online. The bootleggers even sell poor-quality copies of TV shows that have been officially released on DVD.
Petrov said she didn't know that "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" had never had a legitimate DVD release when she ordered her copy of the entire series for about $175. The first thing that seemed unusual was that the DVD came from Canada. She opened the package to find that she had been sent three copies of the set's first three discs. She also suspected immediately that the quality was poor just from the artwork.
"The set looked hokey," she said. "I could have made the covers myself on the computer."
Then she played the discs.
"On the first episodes, the quality was so dark you couldn't even see them," she said. "They got better, but then there were commercials."
It was obvious, she said, that the discs were transferred from VHS tapes recorded off of TV broadcasts.