Here is Widescreen Review's review of Lagaan's DVD

http://db2.widescreenreview.com/dvdrevm....&-find=

DVD Picture:
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 DVD picture exhibits generally pleasing image quality, with images that are mostly sharp with pleasing detail. Images can appear quite smeared, with the loss of detail appearing consistent with the look of noise reduction. Edge enhancement can be quite bothersome, and moiré is occasionally noticed in patterns on clothing. While colors are rich and vibrant, the darker scenes can appear plugged up. Pixelization can be bothersome, and other compression-related artifacts create distraction. Distractingly, negative splices are detected on many occasions. The source element is revealing of dirt, artifacts, and scratches. (Suzanne Hodges)

Soundtrack:
The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack features a substantial -10 dB of offset for dialnorm. The audio presentation is rather pleasant to experience, especially through the music, which has been nicely recorded and projects an atmospheric, spacious presence throughout the listening space. The music also has an abundance in the low-end, with substantial .1 LFE activity. Otherwise, the nature of the soundfield is noticeably subtle in terms of spatiality, and typically focused toward the dialogue. Sound effects can also seem somewhat veiled in the upper-midrange. One notable aspect of this soundtrack production is that the presence of the music is somewhat more prominent than usual, compared to the effects and dialogue. Voices have a spatial ambiance that is indicative of an ADR production, and the ambience rendering of the outdoors might seems a little too subdued. (Perry Sun)

And these are their ratings:

Picture Score: 3
Sound Score (Dolby Digital): 3.5
Sound Score (DTS):NA
Critics' Composite Score:4

poor rating comparing to international, hollywood flick quality!

Kind of strange that Perry Sun thinks that the "Voices have a spatial ambiance that is indicative of an ADR production" when the film quite obviously used location sound most of the time.

Yeah...but a composite score of 4 is still pretty good. "Pearl Harbor" has got a score of only 3. I think they take the film into consideration too.

Comparing it to Lawrence Of Arabia DVD which had a similar running time it is slightly disappointing, if you are going to compare it with other R1 DVDs. Same treatment should have been given to Lagaan; ideally split across two DVD-9 discs. But again, for an Indian DVD, this is cut above the rest (WSR review comparison against Fiza makes an interesting reading too! )

Ali

Fiza scored higher on picture then Lagaan according to the their website (Kudos to Spark/DEI). I think Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai is still amongst the top Indian DVD around in terms of quality in sound and picture with Jung in a near second place. I think Laggan was dissapointing as CT had the abilities to make the DVD pure excellence, but thinking that its just an Indian film has made it the usual release. I only hope the extra lines on the PAL format (coming in march 2002) would sharpen the details furthermore, and rid of some of the moire effects/shimmering.

Also I saw thier recent DVD of Final Fantasy and didn't think much of the picture quality on that. The picture had too much revealing compression artefacts, and the dark details wasn't as crisp as it was on cinema. Are CT standards begining to drop on rushed titles?

Looking at Asoka on DVD for the second time (before I review it) I was happy with the picture quality of the film, dispite some minor faults such as film dirt. Sound wasn't too bad either but not as strong or as emersive as recent Indian Dolby Digital 5.1 films on other DVD's like Citizen or even Abhay.

Final Fantasy DVD video is as perfect as DVD video gets - it's a direct transfer from a digital source (same as Toy Story, Bugs Life and other CGI movies).

Ali

It’ll be interesting to see how Lagaan is released here in the UK. Certain previous Colombia Tristar titles have been release as 2 disc editions while R1 have been single disc versions. But if Lagaan turns out to be a single disc as R1 version the extra PAL resolution wont necessarily offer better sharpness & detail. PAL being slightly higher resolution also takes up more space on DVD – and with a running time of the film already testing the capacity of DVD-9 disc the higher resolution on the same capacity could be counter-productive quality wise.

Ali



Edited By ali on Feb. 02 2002 at 22:25