Columbia House scam?

[nightflier]

Back in the day when LP's were the norm, I joined Columbia House to get in on the 12 for 1 deal they were advertising, heck I even joined their Cassette Tape club. To my dismay, Columbia's LP's were bad copies that were thinner, more fragile, and sounded worse. And the tapes were bad copies that would wear out faster, have cheaply copied artwork and just sounded worse. When I asked repeatedly for an explanation, they dodged my questions (back then you could still get a live body on the phone), especially when I asked them if they had a responsibility to tell their customers that these were copies. So I swore to never join again.

Once bitten... Nope.

So now that everything is digital, I figured Columbia House must be selling decent DVD's, because a digital copy is a digital copy right? Well I don't know. For example, I have both of the extended Lord of the Rings DVD's, the first I bought at Tower Records, and the second from Columbia. And while I'm not certain, but I am almost certain that the Columbia house one sounds worse. The other Columbia DVD's are OK, but nothing to write home about, either. I've also noticed that the inserts are different then the commercial versions.

So has anyone else seen or heard a difference in their DVD's? What about their CD's?

(I posted this under "digital domain" because I'm wondering if a digital copy is an exact copy)