Good. Then they can be 'muxed out'.

I have sampled the songs of this release and some more. I'll have a review sometime later.
The source for this transfer is clearly the original negative. Detail and sharpness are at times
superior, but quite uneven for the usual reasons. More later.

Mike, can you please verify, region coding on this. It is claimed to be region free though? Thanks

From the following http://forums.adobe.com/message/2820939:


It appears that this step was completely skipped during the authoring of the K3G German BD.

Here's my take on the German K3G BD.

- Executive summary: Gem in the rough. Recommended with some reservations.

- Detailed review

- The good:

* Transfer is made from the camera negative and there is no cropping (or very little if any). Superior
source with all the benefits this brings about (full sharpness and detail of the original photography, no
additional grain and copying losses). The imagery looks velvety and often strikingly clear and detailed.
* No EE, no DNR, no other digital tinkering creating artifacts as far as I could see
* No watermarks, no forced commercials, no forced previews
* Lossless Hindi soundtrack is good quality
* Separate song menu (not a given for Bollywood discs from Western companies)
* Officially a region B disc it plays on region A players. Good news for region A customers, but probably
not for the rights holders.

- The not so good:

* The transfer looks more like a "work in progress" than a finished transfer. Two areas need clearly more
work: color grading and digital clean up
* Color grading: Shots that are too pink or show other color balance problems are not rare. They need to be
fixed.
* The transfer is partially quite clean and partially in need of clean up. Some shots are suffering from speckles
etc. including fat ones, also in faces, which is hard to ignore. I found it distracting at times. More work here
would really benefit the appearance of the transfer. One shot had camera flicker which could be fixed.
* Because of the lack of cropping splices are visible at many edits, if you look for them. Most people won't
notice them, I guess. They could be erased. There is also minor instability around edits, most notably a
warp on the 8th frame after the edit. Again, many people won't notice, but once you see it, it may become
a distraction seeing it. They too could be fixed, although it's not easy without a rescan.
* Subtitles are not fully within the image
* The Hindi soundtrack had some short drop outs on my PS3 (repeatable).
* The average bit rate for video is a quite low ~16.5 Mbit/s due to all the supplements they put on the same
disc. It could have been raised to 25 Mbit/s for a more transparent presentation if the supplements were on
a second disc. Since the transfer/source is low noise/grain the compression holds up well, though.

- Summary: Recommended with reservations (colors, speckles). Whether upcoming releases from other companies (including Yash Raj) will address the problematic areas remains to be seen. Till then this is a very nice presentation if you can live with the discussed issues. It sure blows any DVD away concerning the overall presentation quality and rivals the best 35mm prints in some areas.

Any ideas why REM ended up using this colour-botched transfer instead of the otherwise identical one used for their DVD, which had no colour problems?

Great review mhafner. Now get back to work and give us that DCH BD quickly.

One can only guess. The other one they had only in SD maybe. They did not want to spend the money to change what they got in HD. As all distributors they depend on what they get from the producer.

Thanks for your insightful review mhafner!

Hi There MHafner

Thanks for this review, i must say you are spot on!!!
Your points on the 'not so good' about the PQ are def true, i have picked up some places where there is still 'digital spots' etc.
I also had some of the dialogue disappear on the Hindi audio track. When i switched it to the German track, it was there. LOL. i wonder how that happened. Overall i must say, i loved the audio track. Really amazing DTS MA Lossless, the bass speakers had a real workout, lol.
One of the reasons i enjoyed this movie was the background score. It was so emotional. from the opening credits when i hear the backgroubnd score, it really moves me. So in DTS-MA is was just extra moving.

I was happy with the purchase of this disc.

Can any of you confirm if this disc is playable on Region A players. I'm planning to get a copy for review purpose.

Cheerio
Dev