MoserBaer's Swades out

[Anurag1700]

Originally Posted by anibap

This is quite disappointing Asutosh's finest and the only SRK movie I liked with such a bad treatment on BD

I very well understand the feeling when your fav movie goes into docks in HD format. I am also a big fan of the film. I just finished the blu ray and here are some comments if it helps u and anyone anyway.

The Blu Ray authoring is in-your-face a rush job as already mentioned by someone. All the places that frames shake and are unstable on dvd do the same here as well which tels us that the source is the same. And who the heck is the person marking chapters so abruptly between the scenes? If such a simple thing as marking them at the same place as the dvd can not be done properly by the author, then accompanied by the hair strand and condition of censor certificate, it is a proof of the careless way the BD has been authored.

There are instances of edge enhancement as well as DNR. The big letdown unfortunately is the opening shot of the film in which 'Google earth' is zoomed to goddard space center. This looks very bad and unstable. Many may get a heart break and abandon the disc here itself. However given that this a very detailed and fast shot requiring a professional transfer (which obviously MB does not do), one needs to be patient to realise that the rest of the film in motion which is never so fast (infact this is one of the slowest movies ever), looks actually tolerable (if not likable ) on the BD. We may give the credit to the default advantage of BD over dvd. Not to mention it does not have any 'tweaked-authoring' error (because nobody cared to tweak the video parameters) and so rest assured it is still not the worst BD as it is touted.

On the plus side, there is digital noise present in some scenes , which if mistaken for grain can make the BD look in many places a bit 'filmic' as well for some. The colors are a little bit saturated but not to the point of distraction from the intended look of the film and adds certain beauty to to the village colors and NASA outlooks quite well temporarily. More than anything else, I like the framing of BD which I am sure someone has corrected in view of the wrong framing the dvd had got with black bars on both the sides throughout the film. This would have involved a bit of cropping but nothing worth noticing. Please note that thus is not a YRF/KJO kind of film that requires detailing for Larger than life 'spectacle' shots. Thanks to the simplicity of the cinematography, the corrected framing makes the film look acceptable for BD standards.

I disagree to the audio aspects mentioned by some people here. I find it having a very good DTS HD MA. This is much louder and better than the dvd audio . One of the very good front heavy tracks I have listened to on BD in recent times are here. Add to that AR rehman's scoring and music, it feels very nice see my subwoofer getting a workout even in soft songs like 'saawariya'.

It is very difficult to recommend this BD to even the fans of the film, so forget the BD enthusiasts. However if you can live with the carelessnes of transfer as mentioned above and are looking for a better framing, and good audio quality of the film, this one will not disappoint, however will not impress either.