TCM airing pirated copies of film?

[LostHorizons]

What do you think of this man’s claim? The copy of “Garden of Earthly Delights” was from a pirated copy.

[cmovieviewer]

I don’t think TCM would try to get away with that. The film led off with the “Janus Films” logo, used in many of the international films they show. Criterion has also used many films from Janus. I would expect that TCM has a well established relationship with them.

When TCM shows a film in a foreign language, they have to use a video with “burned in” subtitles, unlike DVD or Blu-Ray players that superimpose the text on top of the video. It is possible that whoever prepared the video for TCM went to a public domain source for the English subtitles, and picked up the customized credit that way.

The video quality shown on TCM was very good - it certainly has the appearance of being from an official source.

It is interesting/unusual that these subtitles were used, but I would go to Janus to see what happened.

[LostHorizons]

I can see them playing movies that are in the public domain, but not anything that is "pirated" in the strict sense of the word.

The subtitles at least, seem to originate from a pirate movie forum. As for the Janus logo which the poster above you mentioned, I believe the film itself was taken from the official source and the subtitled version (which TCM aired) is specifically the pirated version.

[TikiSoo]

Well I know from TV and theater experience they show what is provided, sent them (even if it is "sent" electronically, not physical reels of film)

TCM has relationships with distributors like every other outlet. I think their license would be revoked if they broadcast anything outside their distributor's offerings.