I'm still pretty new here having only arrived a couple of months ago and am still getting used to the technology infrastructure and way of doing things here. I'm trying to figure out the best way to watch films at good quality here.

1. Watching anything on satellite looks awful (it's Dream). I know it' SD but is it really meant to be this bad or should I tune it or something? The main TV that came with the house is big but a bit old (no HDMI even). So definitely low-def. Do you think a modern TV would make Dream look better or is the problem with Dream?

2. I stopped buying DVDs off the street and started buying shrink wrapped ones from the Movie Star in Jinqiao. Quality is a bit more reliable but they still don't seem to be straightforward rips of DVDs, they look too compressed for that - or is it my TV / DVD player?

3. I think I'm learning that even though all the DVDs you buy here are labelled Blu Ray they're just DVDs. They all seem to be labelled DVD9 too. Is there anyway to differentiate between a DVD 5, a DVD 9 and a real Blu-Ray? I tried asking but didn't get too far....

I know this is a bit of a bumbling set of questions but there's lots of variables here. Not sure what to fix in order to achieve the goal of watching decent quality movies (and TV) again....any advice you can give would be appreciated...

I've just bought a blu-ray player (Philips) and was surprised how good it is. What I thought (with my old player) was a poor quality Chinese TV turns out to be actually pretty good.

The new player (also made in China) makes my old, ordinary discs look great. In fact, I can't tell the difference in picture quality compared to the few genuine blu-rays I've bought so far.

My local shop, Angel, in Jiaozhou Road has "real" blu-ray discs (they're in smaller packs, but just ask. As you say, most discs seem to be labelled blu-ray now).

DVD 5 is 4.7GB in size and is a SINGLE layer
DVD 9 is 8.5–8.7 GB and is a DOUBLE layer

If you compare the optical side of a DVD 5 to DVD 9, a DVD 9 disc will display very slight moire patters when viewed owing to the the overlapping optical layer. The size of the disc can also be confirmed with a computer.

Blu Ray discs are 25GB single layer and 50 GB dual layer

I have recently bought a HDD HD Media Player (Android) (with a 2 TB HHD) which is much better than feeding discs into a player. Here in Jakarta you can buy movies on Blu Ray ISO disc images, or 1080p HD mkv files for about 4.5RMB, just bring a portable HDD with you is all you need and they copy the movie to there. Is this being done in China?