"The Big Heat" Tai Seng DVD

[M.D.B.]

AKA: Cheng shi te jing. I've heard that the picture quality isn't good, is this true?



M.D.B.

[Brian Thibodeau]

I can't confirm that, but I can say I've had trouble with other Tai Seng releases of Hong Kong pictures, usually in the picture department. Not that all Hong Kong DVDs are pristine, but it seems like Tai Seng goes out of their way to take even modest HK DVD transfers and redo them as poorly as possible, then charge MORE than you'd pay importing the original. They even use the original packaging, albeit with their little logo sticker on it somewhere, but the discs are frequently something less than what the originating Hong Kong company issued. Not sure if you're thinking of buying from them, but I wouldn't recommend it, as nearly everything they sell is available much cheaper elsewhere, and usually in much better condition.

[MrBooth]

Most of Tai Seng's releases are _exactly_ the same as the HK releases, just with their sticker added to the packaging. Occasionally they do their own transfer & mastering - that's almost always worse than alternative releases (though their in-house translated subtitles are often very good).

[Brian Thibodeau]

Then those would be the ones I'm referring to. I've simply had the good misfortune, a long time ago actually, of unwittingly picking up the bad ones on a regular basis. Once I became more comfortable with "overseas" retailers, Tai Seng became a thing of the past. Of course, their pricing is still too high when you can buy the same films from DDDHouse for around $3-$6 U.S. They also used to issue a distressingly high percdentage of crappy laserdiscs too, but then again, maybe even then I simply missed all the pristine ones in favour of the murky messes, not to mention the fact that in those days, the restoration and proper transferring of these films was not as urgent as it is today. I also like what they've done on at least a couple of their Korean releases (like PLEASE TEACH ME ENGLISH) where the English subs are ONLY available on the Cantonese dub track, and NOT the original Korean. Nice. I'm sure it's some convoluted rights issue of something, but I still wish they could've gone that extra mile. I've also got a couple of HK movies from them that are indeed identical to the HK originals, except that they've removed the trailers. Odd.

[MrBooth]

Yes, "odd" is probably the best word for Tai Seng!

The only good thing I can really say about them is that you can still find some of their rebadged imports for titles that are out of print and out of stock in HK now... possibly including THE BIG HEAT?

[Knetan]

hey,

no problem finding it right now cheaply, if you want to shop at hkflix:

http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.528 ... etails.htm

[Beat TG]

has there been any recent DVD release of this movie?

[Knetan]

hey,

deltamac should stand as the more recent I believe and you don't really know whether or not the new distributor of the Star TV catalogue is gonna come in and present the film as it should. I would get the DM dvd if you want to see the film.