I have a hard time with it myself sometimes... but one hint would be to check the back cover art for the artwork copyright year... then look at the release date in the profile. If the release date year is earlier then the artwork copyright year... then that is one time you know you have a re-release cover.

If the dates offer no help just host scans on photobucket or someplace and start a new thread asking. There's enough knowledge lurking around the forums that almost anything will be known and answered for ya.
I've found recently that some snapper cases (Fallen submission) have been re-issued, and the front is identical but there are subtile and/or minute differences on the back. I even looked at them side by side and didn't notice the difference at first glance, it had to be pointed out in the votes.
I guess what I'm getting at is take a good look like playing a "find the differences in these pictures" game. If your eyes start hurting that just means they're sharpening.

Not a truly serious reply, but I couldn't resist.

Only purchase DVD's on the original release date and you'll be fine. 

On the serious side, thanks to Addicted2DVD and mdnitiol - I've never thought to look for an artwork copyright. Of course, my eyes being as old as they are, this could be problematic. 

Quoting MtnMike:

Quote:
Not a truly serious reply, but I couldn't resist.

Only purchase DVD's on the original release date and you'll be fine. 

On the serious side, thanks to Addicted2DVD and mdnitiol - I've never thought to look for an artwork copyright. Of course, my eyes being as old as they are, this could be problematic. 

Time for a magnifying glass! Don't feel bad... I have glasses... and I think I need one at times myself! 

There are several instances where the coverscans do not match the cover I actually have on my shelf (one big category is movies I bought second hand and lacking their slip cover, for example), which, frankly, is all I really care about.

Of course, I accept that that's pretty useless from a community point of view and agree that, in lieu of a better solution, the original cover art is the sensible way to go. I have absolutely no intention of spoiling the on-line database for anyone else just so that it's marginally more convenient for me. But with that disclaimer aside:

The obvious solution is for me to scan my abberant covers and keep them local, but then I need to be very careful about not submitting them, and lock my cover scans, and someone out there might have the same cover and better scans and I'd never know it. Not an ideal solution, especially for the people who do not have scanners.

What might be nice, on the other hand, would be if a title could have multiple scans attached to it; with slip cover, without slip cover, original release, re-release, with court-ordered disclaimer label... whatever variations there are. And then I could choose which version of the cover I want to download to represent it in my collection.

I've not thought this through far enough to warrant posting it in the Feature Requests forum, yet, but  it seemed at least marginally applicable to this thread, so I thought I'd sound people out about it.

What do you think?

Having thought about it a bit more, this is how I'd see it working:

As present, UPC / DiscID and locality uniquely identify a DVD. Those fields and a cover ID would identify a set of scans (front and back). When you download a new title, you would select the scan that best matches the cover you own (possibly there would be a few words of description to help you pick), download only that scan* and you local database tracks the ID number of that scan.

When you submit a new scan, you have the option of overwriting the scan you previously downloaded (improved colours, sharpness, et cetera) in which case only people who have that scan ID would be able to vote on it; or defining a new scan not previously in the database (re-release, without slip-cover, et cetera) in which case there would be no voting (as with new profiles currently) but you'd need to demonstrate a material difference between the existing scans and your new submission.

The only real problem I can see is that people would need to settle for the wrong covers until someone scans in the right ones for their specific release. So you'd need to be able to offer people the opportunity to switch their coverscans for the newly submitted ones, and I'm not quite sure how that would work. Or at least not without getting annoying every five minutes. And you'd also need a way for people to say "no, that is not an official cover of a Firefly release, but a picture of a naked lady. Please remove it from the online database."

Hrm. It occurs to me that this might also make it possible for us to help people identify bootleg DVDs. That could be a very useful application in its own right...

* Downloading all scans would make it difficult (impossible?) for Invelos to know who should be voting on which set of scans. It would also potentially increase disc space usage massively. It would make it easier for people to switch between scans, but I don't think that's worth the overheads it would bring.

The multiple scans of different versions was brought up in another thread a few weeks ago.
I think it would be an awesome addition to the database and would be cool just to see the history of the dvd. Then owners of re-issues could pick the cover they have to display in their local, which you can do now, but not so well without a scanner.
Haven't seen that thread in a bit and can't recall which forum it was under. When i left most liked the idea but also felt that their would be a space issue. I will continue to hope for it, as well as multiple locality's for discs released in 2-4 different countries with the same UPC, which then end up showing up as 2-4 different discs under different locality's. That's just silly.

Quoting goblinsdoitall:

Quote:
Possibly this one?

Noneother!
Thanks, I was being lazy when posting yesterday.