Just received this DVD today. Typical Ayngaran cover sleeve, very basic in white. I was anticipating a 'Collectors Edition', but the guy from Ayng'an tells me this is the only release. Disappointing though!

Will see the movie tonight and post comments soon!

I thought the cover was okay, considering it was the original Indian cinema artwork of the teaser poster. The quality of the video is the best seen from Ayngaran who have increased the bit rate on this title. But still space is wasted on the play all songs feature!

Also some more care is needed in cleaning the film. Some 35mm cleaning work was done but during one reel (when the Tamilain blows himself up during Mahadevan Speech) a faint black line can be seen for about two mins. Other wear and tear (film dirt) can be seen during the intermission and near the end of the film. But they come in the form of small white specks which won't trouble the avarage viewer.

Their subtitles have also improved but thier literal translations still needs a bit more working. Its also great that they have started to subtitle the credits but they didn't subtitle the songs (expect the war song). I think they avoided subtitling the songs as they might have had difficulty conveying the meaning of the tamil lyrics into English and they didn't want to mess up the viewing, which gets quite intense.

Hopefully they will re-do this disc with English subtitles during the songs.

What made the disc for me was the 5.1 soundtrack, and the LFE channel was rocking like no other Indian DVD has done before!!! Especially during the Sri-Lankan war scenes.

The main menu is quite nice and thematic, and is a good way to start this disc as it is partly similar to the theatrical trailer shown in the UK. The film has easy navigation

I will be talking to them about making this film as part of thier special edition label next year with a DTS soundtrack!

Originally this disc was to also have a separate 6.1 DTS-ES track along with a Dolby Digital 5.1 track but Ayngaran felt it would comprimise picture quality after they had talks with the DVD authorers (Prasad) who advised against it.

A good disc that is beyond all new film titles from ERO$ and Yash Raj titles, and even beats DEI's Abhay and Yeh Dil Ashiqana DVD!

Picture = 8/10
Sound = 10/10
Subtitles = 7/10
Cover = 7/10
Menus = 7/10

Overall view = Worth getting.

Some screenshots below;

I thought that when there is a "Play All Songs" feature on DVDs, it is usually programmed to just play the song chapters rather than having the songs on the disc twice. How was it done on the "Dil Chahta Hai" DVD?

Do you know if Maras Vision does Ayngaran's subtitling? They have done their cover artwork before and I read on their website that they also do subtitling.

On the Dil Chatha Hai DVD they also did the same thing, the authorers placed the whole film on one title, then the whole songs on another title wasting more disc space. I think the Play All songs Feature should be abolished, people should selecct the songs from the chapter menu in the main feature film, its not that hard to do!!

Maras Vision just does the DVD covers, while the film > DVD authorers in India do thier subtitling.

I prefer the play all songs option and I think it should be a standard feature for all bollywood films.

Where did you get this DVD from? I can't see it on the Ayngaran site!!

I prefer a higher bit rate so that the video and audio quality improves, if you want to see the songs then its not so hard to select each song from the chapter list, or you just lazy.

I have complained to Ayngaran about this and will look upon it and get back to me. Also Ayngaran website will take at least one week before you can buy it on he internet. I spoke to Ayngaran who state that the stocks are quite low already on this title as its becoming a popular disc. They will have tons more later in the week.

I rented KM today. The quality is very good. DVNR is never excessive (to my eyes), and edge enhancement was minimal. Unfortunately, the image is slightly cropped, and like Sunny said, there is some print damage. My main complaint is that smaller details, such as in shrubs and roofs of houses, are poor, with some moire pattern artifacting. I saw no instances of digital artifacting, even in the difficult to compress rainy scenes and handheld battle scenes. Even with my 2-channel set up, the sound was immersive, though the dubbing was obvious. Commercials for Gemini and Samurai are included.

When playing the songs on KM using the Play All Songs feature, I turned on the layer display on my player, which indicates where on each layer the laser is, and it indicated that the songs were at where they were in the film. For example, when the first song, "Vellai Pookal" played, the layer indicator displayed that it was at the beginning of layer 0. But when the last song played, it was near the end of layer 1.
(Layer 0 is the first layer and Layer 1 is the second. Don't ask me why.) So I don't think the songs are encoded on here twice.

Can anyone please post more screenshots from this DVD, especially of any landscapes? Most people reviewing this have been saying how its the clearest Tamil DVD released to date (beating out even Kandukondain), but how true do you think this is? Just ordered my copy from Nehaflix yesterday and I'm looking to find out more about the picture quality.

I'll have a review ready in some days. The main problem
of the DVD are the interlacing artifacts. It's not progressive.
MH

MDK is on the way. MYKSH I'll have to borrow for a review.
Apparently too bad quality to buy. Keep tuned...
Michel