Title: Dev. D
Year: 2009
BD Release: 2010
IMDB Rating: 8.0
Category: Drama | Music | Romance
Distributor: Moser Baer
Authoring House: Moser Baer
Region Coding: A/B/C
MRP: Rs. 799/-
Media: Main Feature - 50GB BD
Running Time: 02:22:59 hrs
Chapters: 20
Video:
2.35:1, HD 1080p 16:9, AVC 24Hz
Peak Bitrate ?Mbps | Average Bitrate ?Mbps
Audio:
1/3 Hindi - DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (5.1Mbps 48khz) <-- Default Track
2/3 Hindi - Dolby Digital 5.1 (640kbps 48khz)
3/3 Hindi - Dolby Surround 2.0 (192kbps)
Subtitles: <-- 2.35:1 Screen Friendly (Positioned at the bottom of the picture area)
1/1 English
Special Features: SD MPEG2 29.97mhz 4:3 | Dolby Digital 2.0
1. Story of Dev. D (01:10:29)

Special Mention:
No Watermark Logo, during songs or otherwise.<-- All Bollywood Video companies, please take note.
No scrolling advertisements during songs or otherwise. <-- All Bollywood Video companies, please take note.
No advertisements, forced or otherwise, during the movie. <-- All Bollywood Video companies, please take note.
Separate 'Song Menu' to allow direct selection of song. <-- This should be a no brainer for all Bollywood films.

Authoring issues:
1. All songs are not chapter marked.
2. All songs are not included in the song menu.

Review:
Video: For once on a hindi blu-ray, the picture detail is nice and not much DNR, if any, seems to have been applied. Unfortunately the picture suffers form raised blacks and contrast levels leading to crushed blacks, thus robbing the picture of shadow details. But even with it's flaws, the picture is decent enough to not distract too much from the movie itself.
Audio: Unlike the video, there is not too much to complain, as far as the audio is concerned and the awesome soundtrack of this movie comes thru quite well on this blu-ray. I just feel the surround channels could have been used more effectively, specially during the songs.
Recommended

My ratings:
Movie: 4.5 out of 5.0
Video: 3.5 out of 5.0
Audio: 4.25 out of 5.0
Extras: 3.0 out of 5.0
Misc.: 3.5 out of 5.0
Overall: 3.9 out of 5.0




Screenshots Raul07

Equipment used for testing:
Projector: Panasonic PT-AE2000U
Screen: Da-Lite 4:3 120" 'Model B' - White Matte
Viewing Distance: 11' 6"
A/V Receiver: Denon AVR5800
Speakers: 5.1
Front/Main: Paradigm Reference 100 v2
Center: Paradigm Reference Studio CC v2
Rear: Tannoy - Mercury M5
Subwoofer: Paradigm Reference Servo 15
BD Player:
Oppo BDP-83 (Hardware Modified 'Region Free' with 'BDP83-50-0424' firmware)
PS3 (80GB US 'Region A' with firmware v3.50)

I have to agree with you this film was pretty good and refreshing look at the old story. Thanks for the review.

Dev D is the definitive Devdas for me!!

My ratings:
Movie: 4.5 out of 5.0
Video: 3.5 out of 5.0
Audio: 4.25 out of 5.0
Extras: 3.0 out of 5.0
Misc.: 3.5 out of 5.0
Overall: 3.9 out of 5.0

Sanjay bhai, your reviews are great but could you elaborate a little more on the video and audio quality of this release? Does the "3.5" in video make it a below average release?

I realize you are strapped for time for a full blown review but I see a "Reccommended" rating and I wonder if that is only on the basis of the movie itself.
I love the movie but would hate to spend $20 if the PQ/AQ of this BD is only a marginal improvement over the US released DVD. Sadly a MoserBaer only release also means I cannot rent this from Netflix to test it out

The 3.5 video rating ought to be a substantial improvement over the DVD. Since I have not seen either the Moser Baer DVD, or the US released DVD, I cannot make a direct comparison. But based on what I have seen of the blu-ray I am not hesitant to recommend it. Yes the recommendation has a lot to do with the movie itself, but the blu-ray too is decent enought to warrant a purchase, specially in the absence of any other option in the near future.

Is their not a UTV blu-ray on the works?

Not that I know of. It's possible sometime down the line, but atleast I have not heard of any immediate plans. In fact another UTV title, Kaminey has been cancelled, which might suggest that UTV is only interested in releasing current titles on blu-ray, atleast for now.

Thanks Sanjay. Based on your remarks I may get this...

@DVDCollector - I think the UTV release of Kaminey and Dev-D are both shelved indefinitely... which is sad since that was authored by Chandna and we could have had a really fine product that would do te movie justice

Thanks for the review Sanjay. Before leaving for India, I saw a glimpse of the Dev D BD at my friend's place and I am hoping to pick up my copy from India now.

I noticed the same issues you mentioned. Some scenes have such a strong contrast it really looks like the screen has suffered a 'white burn'. The first song when Paro was dancing and Dev was watching is a good example. The same goes for black as shadow detail is clipped. I will see how it works with a different gamma setting. If the shadow is clipped in the source in a bad way I won't be able to recover the shadow detail but I think it might work.

I could be wrong but I think I read somewhere that the director intended to create a high contrast theme to create the effect the film required. Strong colors, bright tones etc to force certain scenes to peoples mind and create the world of Dev D. If that is the case, I can forgive the blown contrast and crushed blacks but I am not sure.

Many films are shot this way to send a message using this kind of extreme white levels. I have not seen Dev D in theater and can't remember how the DVD was.

Sanjay, are you sure about the black levels being raised on the BR? The shots looked fine on my laptop. Certainly not like the Veer Zaara shots, which clearly had raised black levels. I put a few of the screenshots posted here into Final Cut Pro and looked at the waveform monitor, and the black levels looked fine. I was confused by your statement "raised blacks and contrast levels leading to crushed blacks." I could see some crushed blacks in those shots, though they didn't look terrible to me. Is it really that bad? Maybe the actual disc looks worse...

This is exactly the problem with judging a whole blu-ray by a few screenshots. More often than not, there are scenes that are much better than the rest of the disc and there are some scenes that are far worse than the rest of the BD. Thus screenshots, unless carefully selected can be quite misleading at times. I don't remember the Veer Zaara blu-ray much, other than the fact that I had found the picture quality to be quite atrocious and therefore did not bother viewing the blu-ray for more than a few minutes. The Dev. D blu-ray is definately far better than the Veer Zaara blu-ray.

Surprisingly decent BD from MB. But Sanjay's review was spot on regarding crushed blacks.

I loved the movie and would definitely want to own it on blu-ray, but these screenshots don't convince me. I don't remember the colors looking so blown on the big screen, I should have thought that a high-def transfer would be able to better handle the strong contrasts. Even detail is not very satisfying. Is there a UTV blu-ray release of this film outside of India?