Na Tum Jaano Na Hum (2002) has been released
by label Eros on a 2 DVD set, one DVD for the film and one for 45 songs
from recent Eros DVD releases. Eros is infamous for releasing bad quality
DVDs so I did not expect this DVD to be any good.
Well, there's better than expected news. Eros did an OK job this time
and the resulting DVD is often quite watchable although there is still
plenty that needs to be criticised.
The film master used is in nice shape. Some speckles at times, also
editing splices are visible at the top of the picture at many cuts.
And a couple of times large horizontal white tears are visible. Nothing
terribly distracting.
The image has been cropped to an aspect ratio of 2.1:1 which means
that there is some picture missing at the sides which affects shot composition
negatively a couple of times. A dubious decision that makes no sense.
Colour and contrast rendition are ok. Colours look a bit oversaturated
at times and colour balance is not always right, but that was already
the case in the 35mm prints I have seen. Images are also too contrasty
on some occasions, but blacks are deep and shadow detail reasonable.
The sharpness of the images is uneven, just like on the 35mm prints.
The DVD follows the film master here. Overall sharpness is OK, but a
top DVD would be considerably sharper where the film master is sharp.
The DVD is 16:9 enhanced.
The transfer provides a correct 2:3 pulldown but the flags are not
properly set. Unless the progressive DVD player or videoprocessor analyses
the fields itself it will not produce a correct progressive picture.
My system shows a correct progressive picture. Except for one additional
problem which I have never seen before. The luminance part of the picture
follows a correct 2:3 pulldown sequence. The chrominance part does not!!
A closer look reveals that one correct 2:3 sequence is followed by an
incorrect sequence where the chrominance part of the field is not updated
as the luminance is but coming from the previous film frame. So of the
2 times a field from one film frame is visible the first time the chrominance
part of the field is from the previous film frame. The second time it's
correct. Then when the fields of the next film frame are 3 times shown
the first time the chrominance part is again not updated and lagging
one film frame behind. The second and third time it's correct. This
is followed by a correct 2:3 sequence and then it starts all over. The
result is a quite unnatural look of objects with saturated colours that
are moving. The time lag is quite visible if you look for it. The reason
for this is most likely a buggy or misconfigured MPEG2 encoder.
Video artefacts can be found but are not very prominent. There is some
aliasing, some edge enhancement and there are some noise reduction artefacts,
all minor. There is also a veil of noise hovering over the pictures,
sometimes quite visible, sometimes less so. The usual ant hill syndrome
that affects most Indian DVDs with non progressive picture and stone
age noise reduction is absent here. Fine image detail is somewhat jittery,
but not excessively so.
MPEG compression is so so with blocking artefacts visible on fast pans
and scenes with lots of motion. The use of a constant bit rate is outdated
and does not help. DVDs should use variable bit rate these days to avoid
unnecessary compression artefacts. There is also I-frame pulsing which
is not a problem on CRTs but likely so on LCDs and DLPs
All of this combines into a picture that looks at times rather mediocre
but at other times quite good, comparable to the DVD of Kabhi
Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001) The quality level of a good DEI DVD
or DVDs like Lagaan:
Once Upon a Time in India (2001) is never reached, though.
Finally the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound is of good quality except for some
glitches where the sound is interrupted and goes mute. Once in a song.
Quite distracting. There is also a problem with synching the sound to
the picture. A few times there is a delay of half a second or more that
looks very unnatural. Lips are moving without the proper sound present
at the same time. That may be DVD player dependent. Also annoying is
the presence of a rice commercial and two trailers that are played when
you hit the play button for the film. Really, when I want to see the
film I want to see the film and nothing else. Commercials and trailers
belong in a separate section for those who are interested. And rice
commercials don't belong on a DVD at all. The intermission has been
cut out which creates an ugly jump in the presentation. Why? Stupid.
And the layer change happens 2 seconds after a new scene has started.
Some people are really not thinking one bit about what they are doing,
it seems.
There is a supplement in the form of an interview with Hrithik Roshan
that features clips from the film, including some of the cut "Chunariya"
footage with Mr. Roshan. Quality is ok. The second DVD features 45 songs
from recent Eros DVD releases. All not 16:9 enhanced except two and
all in mono and not 5.1 sound. Image quality goes from awful to ok.
All in all not too bad as a free bonus.
Conclusion: The DVD of NTJNH by Eros is among their best releases lately
but is still disappointing compared to the state of the art of Indian
DVDs as demonstrated by DVDs from DEI or recently Western companies
(Lagaan:
Once Upon a Time in India (2001), Asoka
2001, Monsoon Wedding (2001), Mission
Kashmir (2000) and Terrorist,
The (1999)). The best parts are quite watchable. If you like the
film the DVD is worth purchasing.
- by Michel Hafner, fuller review and ratings on the IMDB
