Frequently Asked Questions
When will my order ship?
If the items you ordered are showing as "in stock", they usually ship the same day up until approximately 3PM PST Monday through Friday. Holidays excluded. If all or part of your order is incomplete, we will hold the order until all items are received.
If an item is NOT in stock, here's what generally happens. Unless we're out of a lot of titles for a particular producer, we don't replenish the stock UNTIL someone places an order for it. So if something you want is out of stock, it usually won't get re-ordered. If you place the order, then we'll get it in as quickly as possible.
The DVD I ordered looks "home made". Is it a bootleg?
No. ALL our inventory is ordered directly from the independant producers or publishing dealer representatives. Many independant producers "burn" their own product. That is they burn the DVD themselves, print the overwrap and box them. Some do a more professional job at it than others. Many farm the job out to professional duplicators.
There is no runtime listed for the DVD I'm interested in.
There are a few titles out there with no runtime listed and the time is not supplied by the producer. We suggest you contact the producer and ask why there is no runtime on their particular DVD.
There's no shrinkwrap on my DVD. Is this used?
No. All of our products are unopened direct from the producer. Some producers do not shrinkwrap. We encourage you to contact the producer and ask them why they skip this step. The following producers usually do not shrinkwrap: C Vision (newest releases have a security seal on one edge, but aren't shrinkwrapped), Sunday River Productions, Blackhawk, Blue Ridge, Mark I Video, Goodheart, Pacific Vista, Plets, and Revelation Video and several others.
Why are some DVD's so expensive?
Almost ALL of the producers work out of their house or a small office. Train DVD's are an extremely small and specialized segment of the DVD market. Sales are not in the millions like mainstream DVD's. That being said, some producers simply charge more for their product. In some cases it's based on how difficult it was to obtain or shoot the footage. You'll find that generally content that is vintage based is usually more expensive than modern footage. There are some producers that have excellent modern and vintage at reasonable prices. We want you to get the best bang for your buck, so if you have any particular interests, feel free to contact us for recommendations. We know of hours worth of top-of-the-line vintage footage for under $20, and others even cheaper.
Why don't you carry ______?
There are a lot of producers out there, and we want to carry the cream of the crop. If you know of a good producer, or you're a producer yourself and want to see your product carried here, please contact us! Unfortunately some producers do not see the benefit of having their product available in more than one place and don't offer their products to resellers.
Do you rent or know where I can find a rental?
We don't rent, and we don't know of anyone doing this. Most of the producers we carry prohibit rentals.
The DVD I ordered says "Widescreen" but I just have an old tube TV. What do I do?
No problem. Any DVD will play on any TV screen. Widescreen will play fine on your old TV and a fancy new widescreen TV. Same with Fullscreen. For more on this, check out this PDF file that gives you more of an explaination. -> Widescreen vs Fullscreen Explained . Having said that, we highly recommend at the very least getting a nice flat panel TV and a Blu-ray player. You can get a decent TV for a few hundred dollars, and a Blu-ray player for under $100. This will allow you play razor sharp videos!
I am seeing some videos that say DVD and Blu-Ray. What is Blu-Ray and will it play in my DVD player?
DVD and Blu-ray (often mis-spelled as "Blue Ray") are two totally separate types of optical disc. Blu-ray discs are hi-definition type videos that can ONLY be displayed on a high definition TV or computer monitor. You will also need to have a Blu-ray player. Blu-ray's will NOT play in ANY DVD player regardless of the type of TV or monitor you have. However, Blu-ray players are backwards compatible, and they WILL play any DVD or CD with no problem. If you have a 1080p or 4k type TV or monitor, consider replacing your DVD player with a Blu-ray player. They can be had for approximately $65 these days. Sometimes cheaper during holidays and sales. And even for $5-10 at thrift stores. Just make sure they have the remote for it!
Do you ship internationally?
We ship all around the world. Our shipping rates are the lowest of anyone. We don't profit from shipping! In fact we subsidize ALL shipping methods. That is, the price we charge is LOWER than our cost. Shipping Charges
What language do these DVDs come in?
ALL except for the Hollywood movies are English only.
My DVD player doesn't play region code 1.
Most (but not all) of the DVD's we carry are NOT regionally encoded at all (sometimes known as Region Code 0) meaning they will play on ANY DVD player in the world as long as the player is capable of playing NTSC DVD's. Most new players can play NTSC or PAL format. Also many DVD players now are capable of playing any region. We show the region encoding on all of our DVD's on the main individual product pages. Hollywood type DVDs and Sunday River Productions (for some dumb reason) are the only ones that we know of that are regionally encoded.
How much is shipping?
We pride ourselves on having some of the lowest shipping charges in the business. Don't be fooled by cheaper product prices. You'll likely find that the shipping charges are unreasonably high. -> Shipping Charges
Can I pick up my order?
Contact us. This is now possible. We are located in the tiny town of Kensington, CA.
How are orders shipped?
We use the US Postal Service and FexEx Express. The method depends upon the method you choose at checkout. If you HAVE to have something by a specific date, we HIGHLY recommend FedEx. They generally stick to a given delivery date whereas USPS can and often does get delayed. Orders over 15.99 ounces (usually more than 4 DVDs) can only ship Media Mail, Priority Mail or FedEx.
When will my order arrive?
First Class Mail best case is generally 2 business days for Northern California, 3-4 business days for Southern California, Nevada and parts of Oregon, and 5 business days everywhere else. If we use Priority Mail (see above), this usually shaves off a day for most of the 5 day delivery areas (not always though!). Please note that with the USPS closing sort centers and cutting back, since early 2015 we've seen considerable delays become normal. If you order something 2 Day Priority, there are no guarantees, and while your chances are good that it will make it in 2 days, in reality it could take a week or longer. It's starting to happen more often
FedEx is 2-5 days according to location. But it is extremely reliable and often arrives a day early!
International orders are wildly unpredictable. We've seen orders to the UK take 4 days, while orders to Canada take 12 days. We've had orders to Brazil and Germany take more than a month. These are isolated situations though. In most cases the average seems to be about 4-12 days.
The DVD I want is showing out of stock. When will it ship?
As a general rule, the estimated time you see on the product page is tailored to that particular producer. Some items will be 2-3 days because they deliver fast, others longer as they're not as swift as other producers. Also, we generally place new orders with producers when the stock is low or someone has placed an order. If we are just missing one or two items, we won't re-order unless there are either more in stock, or someone has placed an order. So if you want something and it shows out of stock, the best way to ensure you get it as quickly as possible is to order it right away. Then we will place a replenishment order.
I need my order fast!
If you need a faster method of shipment, please call us at 510-868-5098. We can ship any method using any of the major shipping companies. As noted above, Priority Mail is generally 1-3 days to most parts of the country. FedEx is exactly 3 business days. We can also offer FedEx or UPS overnight if you need it even faster. We don't recommend USPS Express overnight.
The DVD I ordered is not playing properly in the following manner:
a) If it is freezing or skipping at various points. Try playing it in another player. If it does the same exact thing in the same exact spot, then you've probably got a defect and you should contact us. Some people will say "My player plays everything perfectly, so it must be the disc". This isn't actually the case. It depends on how well your player can read the disc. A disc that has its data slightly off should be playable on any player.
b) There is no audio. This comes up quite a bit. There are some older players (Sony notoriously has this issue) where the player can't find the audio track. It is there. These discs are data discs. Little tiny pits with 0's and 1's on it. They are read and an image and audio is interpreted from that. It would be 100% impossible for a DVD to be defective with no audio. The solution is fairly simple, but hard to explain. Try looking on your remote for a button that may say AUDIO or SAP.If you have one of those buttons, press it and try and get your player to look at another audio track. It's 100% there, you just need to instruct your player to find it. If you don't have these buttons, try the MENU button and then look for the AUDIO setting of your player and try to find a setting that deals with alternative audio tracks. It sounds a lot harder than it actually is. Once you find it and have fix it, you shouldn't ever have to mess with it again.
c) Any damages like a broken case or a scratched disc, contact us. You CAN play a scratched disc until we get you a replacement. Your player is optical. It can't get harmed by a scratch (or magnet!).
Contact us. Some very old DVD players are not able to handle DVD-R's. Also, sometimes we just get a bad one that needs replacing.