I still don’t understand why the fake DVD shops are tolerated in China. I am pretty sure copyright laws apply here but the shops are still open, still selling fake DVDs seemingly with impunity. Big Movie has outlets all over Shanghai but the biggest one I have found is on Xinle Lu. The one which is the busiest is the one on expat street – Anfu Lu.
The shopkeepers will check the DVD for you if you like and will let you know which the good copies are and which are a bit dodgy. And there are bad copies. I remember buying The King’s Speech and the dubbing was so awful it ruined the whole film. Some of the films have intermittent copyright warnings which run across the screen – not for resale – etc. which is a joke.
I bought a BBC documentary recently and at the beginning, they illegal copier of the thing has added an American copyright notice at the beginning, warning that federal action would be taken. I mean, honestly, what are they doing? It beggars belief! 
As Oscar night approached I headed down to the shop and bought all the of the nominated films for about £1.40 each. I felt a bit guilty but to be you just cannot find anywhere in China which sells official DVDs. Only fake ones are available.
There are sections of the shop which are for children, a French language section, one for BBC documentaries, old classics and of course, the latest ‘releases’ (not that they have been officially released but hey, you know what I mean).
The cover artwork always looks pretty good but the text is often so small you can’t read it and full of grammatical and spelling errors. I think sometimes they just put it through Google translate and paste the text onto the sleeve.
We have suffered a serious setback recently here in China because Netflix has ceased to be available. Whereas we were always able to run a VPN and pretend we were in in the USA or UK and then watch Netflix with a paid subscription, now they will not allow us to run a VPN. So we are stuck with no tv and no Netflix.
So for the immediate future, Big Movie is providing us all with a valuable service, even if the quality is not great, it beats staring at the wall!