I have not seen Sholay Waiting for RGV Company's screening

I might end up watching the original before I see RGV's. Don't know. Can't stand these horrid DVD's. quite a SHAME

Yuvan, you should really really watch the original... even if it means using only the speakers of your TV instead of a 5.1 speaker setup (if you want to watch the Eros-204-minute DVD... this way the sound won't sound all that bad).

Yuvan - See it in order to experience it. My pop is still crazy about this film, though i don’t share his enthusiasm, i can kind-off-relate to it. I still think its the most "honest" & “fun” bollywood film.

I also like it because it pretty much welcomes bolloywoods "rip-off age" with SHOLAY (pretty much the best masala-western film that I know of ) being an obvious take on Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" . My recommendation to current filmmakers – see SHOLAY to adapt ‘foreign’ thought process desi-style.

changes made, see what you concur from the DEI-EROS shot

harry_rasul already made the changes, but it was not nrcessary as even though rail and the smoke is changing, background is not changing. What I posted before still stands.

Ultra DVD and Gold VHS both have a different opening -- The banner of "United Producers" is shown just before the first scene of the movie (train coming in). This banner is missing from both DEI/Eros and Eros/B4U.

As we all know, the tanga chase sequence in Eros/B4U happens like this -- first the entire Hema sequence is shown and only after Hema is captured is Dharam's sequence shown. Hema's chase has "tabla" background music while Dharam's has western background music.

We also know that in DEI/Eros, Ultra, and Gold, this sequence is slightly shorter and that Dharam's and Hema's scenes are interspersed. I noticed that in DEI/Eros, when Dharam's scenes are shown (between Hema's scenes), the music is "tabla" background music. HOWEVER, in Ultra DVD and Gold VHS, Dharam's scenes (between Hema's scenes) are shown with "western" background music!!

That's another point of difference -- clearly different prints are used as masters.

Well, newdeep, lets ask excel to give us a well deserved world class sholay with dts

Sanjay mentioned another version/ Qawali.
viewtopic.php?t=8245&start=15

Has anyone here seen the qawwali sequence? Is it a full picturized song?

It's understandable as Jagdeep's character was named "SOORMA BHOPALI", like a Qwwal.

Sorry if I'm about to be post redundancies (I lost track of all the replies):

When I was a kid, I saw Sholay on VHS (not a "DVD copy"). Asrani's "jailer" stuff was in it (though I recall my mother's having told me that when she saw the film in theaters, the sequence was not present, and that it had later been re-inserted). Gabbar did not die. I remember having pestered her, "WHY WOULDN'T HE KILL HIM?" She told me that it was a "moral" thing, and that the censors would not have been happy with such an ending (apparently, I knew what "censors" were...lol). There was certainly no "mystery qawwaali song" present.

More recently, I acquired both the Eros/DEI version, and the "Eros" version, of the film. The former has better sound and better picture, but the colors do feel a bit "false." The latter looks much more natural (albeit faded), but it suffers from a lot of "hissing and popping." All in all, I prefer Eros's version, simply because it's the more interesting version of the film. Really, the only big difference is the ending, as you'd likely miss all the other "additional footage," but I do prefer its ending enough to opt for that edition. Apparantly, there's a new "Carlotta" version of this film, now available. I haven't yet checked it out, but it looks pretty good. It seems to be presented in a matted 2.35:1 aspect ratio. In other words, I should assume that you see "less" than you do in Eros's DVD, as the top and the bottom (on Carlotta's) have basically been "blocked out." This isn't exactly a bad thing, as more is not necessarily better (if it were, why would we even have the "close-up"?), and I'm pretty sure that the film was shown in theaters in this "matted" format. Eros/DEI's version is matted, as well, only it mattes in a peculiar way; you end up having more of the picture cut out than seems right (though it's not too bug a problem). Similarly, Eros/DEI chose to block out the top and bottom of Zanjeer (another fantastic film), only in that case, it was a far more noticeable problem.

I think the Carlotta disc is probably the best of the bunch (assuming it shows the "director's cut"), as its picture tops Eros's, yet its framing tops Eros/DEI's. No release, yet, however, seems fit to represent this film. We might just have to wait for a Blu-Ray version (which, too, will likely be sub-par).

,rana sahab!! Make a note!

Never doubted/ suspected superiority of DEI-EROS's Progressive SHOLAY. Even though cropped from sides it's still the PQ of choice. Extra at top and bottom in some versions is irrelevant as it never was intended to be screened.

Audio, of course DEI-EROS Sholay is as good as it gets.

Sholay is film meant to be seen in GRAND VISTA WS..period!!

By the way in case anyone is doubting that there ever was a 'qawalli sequence' in Sholay, let me tell you I have myself seen the qawalli sequence, although not as part of the film and that too a loooong time ago. The Qawalli was picturised on Dharmendra and Amitabh and it was titled "Chand Sa Koi" and was approx 11 minutes long. It was sung by Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Bhupinder, and Anand Bakshi himself, who ofcourse also wrote the lyrics for it.