Empresses In The Palace / Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan / Hou Gong Zhen Huan Zhuan Chinese TV Drama - 19 DVDs in Box Set (PAL - All Region, Mandarin with English Subtitle)

Edit: I have to update this review based on the subtitles alone. I was willing to forgive so much based on the series itself. But since I wrote this review, I have found the entire full length series with amazing subtitle on a different service. Since watching this much better version, I have realized that, just because you can figure out what is going on through the dvd, it is lacking all the nuances that are important. Because you can get the app for the other service on Amazon, I am willing to share what it is - Viki. That said; in order to see the version I am speaking of, you must be logged into their website and it's a fan channel.=================I was first drawn into this series through the abridged version on Prime and Netflix. I was instantly transported into this beautiful and amazing world based on palace intrigue and struggles. The opening and closing credits, plus some plot issues, made it obvious that there was so much more that the abridged version was missing. But that version was enough to convince me to purchase the full format.Wow. What a difference! The stories are so much more in depth. The plot issues cut via editing were answered. So many more additional and varied characters that were edited out in the abridged version. Just an amazing series overall. I have binged both versions many times.The reason I give it 4 instead of 5 stars is the issues of the English subtitle translation. At points it can get pretty bad. But never to the point that you lose what is happening. But all of the very subtle and yet very important harem rank issues are lost in the translation. But it's not enough to deter me.It can be a bit of a gateway drug to Asian costume dramas. Since I have found this series, I've found a few more that I really enjoy as well. But this one is my favorite of them all.

The subtitles are in general very unfortunate - genders, plurals and tenses are often randomised and the sentence structure is often garbled. The content of the videos is oversimplified in the subtitling, leaving out complexities of titles, poetic sayings, and proverbs as if a western audience can’t possibly be expected to handle the specifics of Chinese culture and language. The use of language that expresses difference in rank between speakers is also generally omitted, even though such forms, although a little dated, occur commonly in European languages.Having said that, the quality of translation varies between episodes, with some being good and others almost incomprehensible.The video quality is very good though the colour is rather oversaturated but it is nothing a good video player won’t fix.There are volunteer-written subtitles available on line, originally from Viki, which are generally much better. Using Potplayer you can play episodes from DVD with both the DVD and Viki subtitles on screen. Or you can play episodes from various download sites and use the Viki subtitles, bypassing the DVD option altogether. Also YouTube has the first 28 episodes or so available with an excellent volunteer translation.So the bottom line is that you can watch the whole series and understand most of it with a bit of tinkering.The boxed set is beautifully presented and the series itself is brilliant.

It breaks my heart not to give a higher rating but this longform series has a major flaw for English speakers. Having watched the abridged Netflix version I wanted to enjoy this series in its entirety. It's a beautifully presented package but as a previous review has shared - the subtitles are abysmally atrocious and unworthy of such a magnificent production. I'm not sure if someone got lazy or just didn't care but it's as if they combined speech recognition software with google translate. It is indeed distracting to try to make sense of gibberish - if the subtitles were simply ungrammatical one could still make sense of them but too many phrases simply don't make sense and are just words strung together taking our attention away from the luxurious images on the screen. Garbeled or missing allusions regarding intricate details of ranking among the women and their attendents as well as the political importance of their families leave the viewer unaware of the reasons behind imperial decisions and often deadly animosity between the concubines.We can only hope that enough interest in the abridged version will motivate producers to reissue this with much better captioning. In the meantime I think I'll just turn off the captions and make up my own dialogue.

I bought this for the English subtitle. I regret to report that the English subtitle is quite below par, it is as good as those that you will find in any Hong Kong martial arts movies. If you are buying this set just so that you can get a sense of what the conversation is about, then it will do its job though minimally. Seriously, the English subtitle does not reflect the high level and poetic mandarin spoken in this series.

This drama is visually magnificent. The sets and costumes are stunning. I have previously bought DVDs of this series from other publishers but the video quality is terrible. This set is labeled HD on the box but the actual quality to my eyes is SD. Nevertheless it is still the best video quality that I've found so far. The English subtitles are passable.

I found this on Netflix originally. Once I finished that, I looked it up online to buy a DVD set, and found out the Netflix version was only a teeny tiny/super condensed fraction of the show! Do yourself a favour and get the whole set- you won't regret it. :)

I utterly adore this series, it's such delicious eye candy with an awesome female lead. The subtitles are disappointing, and I know I'm missing out on so many important little details, but it is still worth it.

I love this drama packaging was beautiful, the costumes of that period real or not so exquisite .As previous reviewer commented the subs are not great but if you follow story carefully you can make it clearand get the story. I do wish translations were better but this has come along way from no subs.I comment Amazon and its sellers for this great find.