i dont blame people for downloading, down here if you want to rent a dvd you will only get a burned copy of the original which is pixed as hell and real bad and to make matters worse with the pdvd prints being better then the old cam prints and usually having the whole movie the stores down here are not even ripping the original dvd anymore, so i have to get the 2 cd rips and put them on a dvdrw and the print is better then the stores ripped copy, but if i like a movie then i will get the original from dvdunlimited, plus there are a lot of stupid people out there who think that the rip is the "original" print, so they wont buy it and down here they try to rip you off they charge $35-40 cdn like who will b it for that much new hollywood movies are cheaper, the only company that might dook in hd/blu ray is utv the rest bet will be bad, i will just wait and see if its worth the $ to get a hd/blu ray for indian movies or not

awaaz - i can get a 28 gig file down in about 4-5 hours..

mhafner - its the same old pickle with downloading harms companies blah blah.. but being an early adopter of DVDs and buying 100s of DVDs legitmately, i came to a stage to realise that bollywood dvds were not the money you pay for them.. crap quality media being used, crap encoding, no sense of digital-ness in it etc... i for one dont want to be the mugg lining the pockets of the big corporate bollywood release companies.. i supported them during the early phases, now im downloading and letting other people pay for third rate quality crap!! As for it being "blocky crap with low bit rates" I really think you should download some of the movies and try them out... the HDTV releases are amazing.. I was watching Predator the other day and it was awesome.. knocks the pants of any DVD release and to me seems flawless.. times have changed.. its false economy investing in DVDs /HD-DVDs/Blu-Ray in general.. Bollywood especially!!

Regards

/the pirate

i have to agree with Faddy bhai downloading is the way...currently u can get full dvd (7.1G or more)of the latest movies on torrents & newsgroups way better than what u can rent or buy from ur local dvdwalla if u don't have good downloading speeds u can have the choice of going for a dvdrip of 4.7G or better still divx of 1.7G all versions much better than the dvds brought for £3-£5 !!!

as for blueray HD etc i'm gonna wait till the one format prevails over the other and than download those dvds...theres no chance in hell that bollywood dvds will improve on the new format they couldn't get it right on the old dvd and they won't on the new one THATS A FACT !!!!

Just out of interest how long did you try the iDream venture out before you sold it? And how many DVDs did you release in that time?

Ali

I think, here we are talking about 2 diff things?

downloading inferior autored or inferior copied hindi dvds vs downloading quality stuff et all!

I'm not asking you to buy crap. Just do your part when high qality is offered at fair price, and it's likely not coming from Eros and Yash Raj etc. for now but newcomers or non Indian companies.
Concerning the quality of HD downloads, they are all over the place. If you download original HD-DVD stuff it's great (and completely illegal), high bit rate TV stuff can look very nice too. But the channels that use MPEG2 at 10-12 Mbit/s can't handle fast motion and it becomes a blocky mess. You find plenty of these too on the net.

Mike can u please comment?

http://511.forum.onetwomax.de/topic=104574217669

Asoka in DTS ES/DD EX

The DVDs:
DVD 1 - The revised „Directors CUT “- version, 169 min. running time >>> UNCUT
* Display format 16:9 (2,35: 1) anamorph/PAL
* Clay/tone: German in DTS & DD6.1EX/Hindi in DD5.1
* optional German sub-titles
* no Songmenü, Songs on the bonus DVD again drauf
DVD 2 - The bad Erstfassung from July 2005, 152 min. running time
* WITHOUT WORDS
DVD 3 - The bonus DVD
* Cinema Trailer Asoka
* Making OF Asoka
* Making OF Asoka - The Big Fight
* Bollywood - a history (already when other LaserParadise publications thereby)
* Songs out: Asoka (6Stck.), Rog (4), Chand Bujh Gaya (4), Shart (7), Yeh Dil (6), Dhund (6)
* Teaser and/or Trailer of: Rog, Chand Bujh Gaya, Yeh Dil, Dhund
„The Making OF “s is German untertitelt (also disconnectible), the Songs generally not (on the bonus Disc).

It's about the Swiss DVD of Lakshya which is better than the German. Compared to the NTSC the difference is that it's PAL with 4% speedup (so progressive after simple field combination)(but sound has correct pitch, not sped up!), it is better compressed and the supplements are better quality because the original PAL was used and not PAL to NTSC conversion. It also has subtitles in French, Germand and Italian and a full German soundtrack. Picture and sound of the feature compared to NTSC are quite close except for better compression. DVD is only available in Switzerland.

I know people that have spent alot of money on their TVs and sound systems but then will download crap to watch on it! Helloooooo!! If your going to watch downloaded crap, why spend so much money on your TV and sound system!

Prime Focus are building a HD-DVD encoding system via a Blue Fish 4:4:4 HD Fury capture card and using the Edius Canopus Pro Encoder 2 software.

Furthermore, I spoke with Prasad who wanted to know more about the sole VC-1 Fathom Encoder card.

So it looks like Hindi/Tamil HD-DVD/Blu-Ray is not that far off.

What do you think is the best 1080p capture/encoder (for VC-1, MPEG 2 or AVC formats) in terms of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format?

LOL.. im pretty surprised at how everyone is refering to downloaded stuff to "crap." I can honestly say that there are rips available that will not look any different to the original.. hell I`ll even go as far as saying that they are even better.. look at the version of Sholay posted on bwt a while back.. its been reauthored and looks great.. gone are the days that all downloaded stuff are shitty cam prints.. with dvd-rot etc kicking in nowadays, it makes no sense buying a format that you cannot archive... download, watch, delete!!

Microsoft PEP VC-1 encoder and some of the latest MPEG4/AVC encoders. But the encoder is only half the quality, the other is an experienced operator. I bet India has no top encoders or compressionists for HD at the moment. The technology is too new. Europe is also only about to develop the necessary infrastructure.

We tried for about 2 years and made around 16 DVDs on iDream and few more under different brand name as they are of inferior quality.

We sold it for two main reasons
1. WASTE OF TIME trying something out of passion when most of the target customers don't appreciate what they are getting for such a small market.
2. Ran out of financial resources. Out of 16 titles we did only 2 brought us profit. One of those two is Missamma which made us last past our first year.

Luckily, iDream became top brand name amoung Telugu DVDs. So, we got sold at fair price and KAD is continuing to maintain the quality so far. Recently, they also seem to lose interest in quality business approach because of lack of sales.

Life is MUCH better being on the customer side. After my experience with iDream, I try hard to not complain about bad DVDs. Instead, I choose to appreciate good quality one's as life is THAT BAD on the business side of this business. Most of you here who complain about even decent quality DVDs will start appreciating them as great quality DVDs once you see the dreaded side of marketing DVDs.

I was referring to downloaded "crap" that is cam quality prints that people watch on their Tvs! Even if you have compressed the original DVD to fit on a 4.7G DVD, it is not as good as the original.