KJO Movie BDs : Yashraj v/s SONY comparison- My Detailed Comments

[Anurag1700]

Karan Johar Blu rays: Yash raj v/s SONY

Hi All, Ok after waiting for some time that someone wud tell me in detail what exactly is the difference, being a fan of the films themselves, I couldnt wait any longer and bought Sony's KHNH (Kal Ho Na Ho) and K2H2 (Kuch kuch Hota Hai) BD. Having skipped through K2H2 and finished the film KHNH in its entirety, there is no doubt on the fact that everyone already mentioned- Sony is indeed the best version out there for these films yet.

Having established the superiority of Sony over Yashraj, The most important thing here is that though sony is better it does not necessarily solve the major issues that were associated with yashraj version. FYI, I dont have any idea of BD authoring specs and whatever i know, have read and learnt only from what is posted in Blu ray forum and zulm.net. however Since I have Yash Raj versions as well I just thought that I wud share my own (as a layman audience's) comparative findings here for everyone's benefit. My comments are mostly based on KHNH BD but the assumption is all three titles should have received the same treatment in the authoring stage.

Source:
Sony and YRF (Yash raj Films) have used the same HD source for making their BDs. There is absolutely no difference in the condition of source i.e. scratches/Speckles/Wear n tear/Editing/splicing points that appear throughout the film on both versions. However, looking at the characteristics of source used by both, one thing is quite obvious- The source itself suffers from heavy contrast boost - something that can be tweaked only upto certain limit by any authoring company- more on this below.

Cropping and framing:
Both sources being the same, Have been used exactly the same way for framing by both companies. left right top and bottom of frame, Sony does not provide an iota of more/less image than Yashraj. Both versions retain the interval points as well. When Yashraj replaced their modern Logo on their older movie beginings having older logos, I was expecting Sony would replace the current (MNIK(My name is Khan)/WUS(Wake Up Sid) kind) 'Dharma Productions' intro on these older films but none of the companies has done that. I am happy for this reason that the nostalgic feel as far as intro is concerned is alive. I hate yashraj for ripping us of the same in BDs of DTPH (Dil To Pagal Hai) and Mohabbatein -their older flowery logo had its own magic.

Menus: Quite a few Differences in Menu Design:
1) Sony does not skip the main menu for playing Movie. Yashraj directly jumps to Movie after their Intro logo.
2) When watching just the main menu, Sony has a Static Menu(a below average quality JPEG poster image) with music playing in BG (Background). Yashraj has motion menu and visuals of the film running in the background.
3) There is no Sony Logo music before the main menu. Sheer silence of logos/warning before the movie tune begins in main menu. However with yashraj, we need to tolerate their Logo music which thankfully does not get repeated since these are dharma production films. Otherwise for their YRF in house productions, its quite irritating that once the intro music for YRF HE is over and the BD jumps to movie feature, we have to once again tolerate the same intro music for the film itself.
4) After selecting an option from pop up menu, Sony's Pop up disappears immediately while Yashraj stays on for another 20 seconds. Even after Sanjay0864 raised this issue time and again for every single Yashraj BD, they continue to bother us with such basic menu issues.
5) A strange difference: I thought this issue existed only for Veer Zaara but here we are again. Only for KKHH, when u click pop up menu there are thumbnail shots of the scene/song . Try to pause the film at the same point of time and compare the thumbnail with the actual shot. U will notice that Yashraj has the same shot in thumbnail while in Sony version, all colors are differently treated between actual shot and its Thumbnail. This is because these thumbnails are probably from the dvd version which contains actually the director's intended filmic color. (FYI in Veer Zaara BD, because of screwed up black levels, the diff between Thumbnail and actual Shot is night and day.)

Color/Contrast/Brightness/Sharpness:
Contrast level is the key difference between Sony and Yashraj - The reason solely responsible for making it the best of the lot out there. Sony has a slightly lesser contrast boost than Yashraj. Although, as mentioned above, since the source itself suffers from heavy boost, this hardly makes any difference to bring back the director's vision. However the benefit because of slightly less contrast boost are below:

(i) Firstly, the obvious benefit: More details on shadow areas, shades of clouds, details in design/lines of whitish-shaded costumes etc in turn giving the feel of increased sharpness when infact nothing separately was done for sharpening the image. Case in point KHNH: At the water's edge, when Rohit gives flowers to Naina to handover to Aman later, when Naina thanks rohit and bends over to kiss him, pause it and look at clouds above New York Skyline - In Sony, All clouds are better detailed and have better shades of Grey for better image definition.

(ii) Color: Better color saturation visible to the eye when infact again, nothing specifically has been done to color saturation levels at all. Lesser contrast enables us to appreciate colors which are not rich as well because they are now in the same light as the rich colors.

(iii) Most important: Artificial Grain Reduction: Because of lower contrast boost, the irritating digital noise, which is often times wrongly mistaken as natural film Grain have slightly reduced on Sony. This in turn is giving the feel of increased sharpness when infact nothing special has been done here as well. Case in Point, KHNH: when Rohit asks Naina to marry her inside the palace (or whatever) just notice when both are in the frame from side angle and rohit is speaking to her. The number of noise artifacts is much reduced now although personally, for me it still exits in unacceptable level. Lower contrast also makes smooth scenes look filmic instead of enhanced digital look for sometime during the film although these moments are few and far in between, thanks to the non-filmic nature of the source itself.

Audio/Subtitles/Watermark:
1) The default Audio in Sony is DD 5.1 and DTSHDMA needs to be manually selected. I hate this blunder absolutely. In Yash Raj its DTS HDMA 5.1 as the default audio. The quality of both DTS HD MAs in terms of surround levels, Subwoofer effect and soundstage felt exactly the same to my untrained ears. FYI, the movie suffers from sound sync issues in a couple of scenes with atmospheric noise making dialogues inaudible and these have not been solved in either versions. Honestly we shouldnt be even expecting this from indian production houses.
2) Only English Subtitle in Sony while English and Arabic in Yashraj. MOST CRITICAL screw up: WHile Yashraj's subs are 2.35:1 screen friendly, Sonys Subtitles are not. Thats right. One line appears in Movie frame while second line appears on black bars. CIH (constant image height) Screen owners of non hindi origin, beware before u buy sony version for this.
3) No Watermark/ logo of any kind with or without subtitles on either versions.

Final Word:
If anyone refers to Anibap's Excellent review of KHNH BD to which I 100% agree, the most critical issues with Yashraj BD were two:-
1) Unacceptable Contrast Boost; and
2) Wrong Source (HDTV/Digital TV look) as far as color parameters are concerned.

If anyone already owning a Yashraj version is looking out for a possible solution to specifically these drawbacks in Sony version, DONT. Because these issues are as it is present in the sony version (Case in point: refer zulm.net for my dvd comparison of Raul 07's SS of Naina's white dress inside the palace when Rohit asks her to marry. In SONY it is still totally overblown in white and the lines on dress are still not visible). Sony has reduced contrast level but is not enough to make a double dip from POV of a true film fan who is a true BD enthusiast. Most importantly in SONY, still we are not getting the director's vision which should be the numero uno priority of any BD authoring house.

On the other hand, if u are a person for whom Enhanced digital look and beautiful and over saturated colors matter to show off your home theatre to friends and family, and are only looking for a better PQ with the existing look of the Yashraj version, then u will definitely get better colors, sharpness and lesser Digital Noise with the correct amount of grain in SONY. SONY is definitely the most recommended version out there for this kind of audience.


PS: Sorry all but I dont have drive to provide any SS. Otherwise i understand a picture is worth a thousand words. Hopefully i didnt cross thousand words above(or may be i did) .