Pirated DVDs are more visible/available in Asia. What struck me about them is how consistently and inexplicably bad the quality is.
There appears to be two sorts of copies – one involves someone physically sitting in a movie theatre with a video recorder; the other directly copying from a source disk. The former is understandably crappy given the propensity for patrons to cough, fidget and use their mobile phones in cinemas. The latter should result in perfect copies, right? After all, both the source and target are digital and the media capacity is the same.
So why can’t video pirates get digital-to-digital copies right? My guess is, not for lack of know-how, but rather a lack of care and pride in one’s work. In other words, close enough is good enough.
As the general population consume this “close enough is good enough” material, does it deaden their appreciation for quality?
When whole nations and whole generations have their populations numbed to quality in this way, how can they then hope to spot quality when they see it, let alone to cultivate the ability to create it in the first place?
Hence the hidden cost to societies – the promulgation of “good enough is close enough”.
(Disclaimer: I can appreciate why piracy exists, but I do not condone or support it.)
