Reuters, The Associated Press, and Bloomberg Information Services have reported that TPM is beginning to appear on bootleg VCDs (not DVDs as we previously reported) in Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia. Reuters also reports that copies have appeared in a few US cities.

Here are some excerpts from the reports.

The Associated Press

Pirated video CDs of ""Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace'' are widely available in shopping malls for Hong Kong for $3.20 to $3.80, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday. In nearby Macau, the pirated VCDs are selling for about $1.50.

Despite rampant crack downs by customs officials, pirated CDs, VCDs and software are still widely available in Hong Kong and Macau.

Reuters

MACAU - The new ""Star Wars'' movie premiered in this Portuguese-run territory on pirated video compact discs (VCDs) this week, complete with Chinese subtitles.

""Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace'' was released just a week ago in U.S. movie theaters but Macau stores were already doing a brisk business in pirated video CDs, a format almost unknown in the West.

Police said the VCDs were selling for 12 (US$1.50) to 14 patacas.

One vendor, who declined to give his name, said someone from nearby Hong Kong, another hotbed of video piracy, had sold him several dozen Star Wars VCDs but insisted he did not know they were pirated versions.

""Very nice, very nice,'' was his only comment when asked about the film.

Bloomberg News

Video compact disc copies of the hit film, released in the United States on May 19, sell for as little as HK$20 ($2.58) each. As News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox unit, which is distributing the film, didn't make any video copies of the production, the pirate copies were videotaped by pirates off the screens of U.S. movie houses.

The Phantom Menace is scheduled to open in Hong Kong cinemas on July 1.

UPDATE: Harry Chen checked in to relay some facts about VCDs.

VCDs are Video Compact Disks, which store a maximum of 74 minutes of MPEG-encoded video on them, viewable on PCs and VCD players. The two-VCD packs are selling in Hong Kong for about $3.50, and I was told that the quality was better than usual for a bootleg whose master was a camcorder. There are no subtitles on the VCDs, so I doubt many non-English-speaking Chinese are buying the bootlegs now, but once bootlegs with subtitles appear (in late June), expect those to make a huge dent in the movie's box-office for Hong Kong and China.

My main point is: why would anyone want to watch a film with excellent visuals and sound that have been compressed to MPEG quality, not to mention taped with a low-resolution camcorder?