PROJEKT iVIEW : EROS ENTERTAINMENT POISED TO DESTROY AYNGARAN
iVIEW AUTHOR:
JEFF ELLETO (Alexandria, USA)
email: withheld
Oh how I hate you EROS ENTERTAINMENT. You are about to take my favorite Tamil DVD company and destroy it. I read with disgust that Eros Entertainment had purchased 51% of Ayngaran . Eros Entertainment knows how to ruin a good DVD release with substandard picture and sound quality ,while Ayngaran always master their releases with great care resulting in crystal clear picture quality and great audio options.
A few years ago I began buying Indian DVD’s and it seemed that most of them were released on the EROS label. These movies always had a washed out picture and bad sound. I figured the originals were like that because I was so unfamiliar with the Indian film industry, but as I became more sophisticated in my Indian viewing I realized that it was EROS releasing shit not India.
My local Indian Video Store actually had someone very familiar with all Indian films and he turned me on to South Indian movies. Tamil and Telugu films are super dramatic and I fell in love with them. Ayngaran International releases a majority of the Tamil films and I suddenly saw a clear picture and stereo audio that didn’t sound like it came from hole in the ground. EROS was like an astigmatism and AYNGARAN was Lasik surgery. AYNGARAM I was told mastered the DVD from the original negative and who knew where EROS mastered from….maybe from a bootlegger on the street. What a minute, the fucking bootlegger’s copies were clearer than EROS!
As years passed by, new video companies sprouted up and DVD’s with better quality began being released. SHEMAROO released some of the same titles as EROS , but they had vibrant colors and actual bass in the sound. I always loved TAAL , but when I saw the SHEMAROO release it was like a new movie! DON was released on ADLABS and I’ve never seen such a clear picture and I was watching it on an old 53 inch tube projection TV.
Then came SALAAME-E-ISHQ……I looked forward to a YASHRAJ 2-disc release and then reality hit me when I realized it was being released on EROS. I decided to be open minded as I placed the DVD in my player and turned on my TV. I had to wait thru all the EROS advertising crap , it always makes me feel like Malcolm McDowell in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE where he’s forced to watch the TV with his eyes propped open and finally the menu screen appeared and pressed play . The first thing I noticed was a very large widescreen picture that didn’t seem to fit the screen correctly, then I couldn’t read the credits because they were cut off the left and right side of the screen and the picture had a soft focus. At least the colors were pretty…..
I love to get my frustrations out by emailing companies when I get really worked up, so I looked up the EROS address for the US , England and India. Of course the US address was incorrect and this is on their own fucked up website! Here is my email to EROS :
I’ve written Eros a few times in the past but I never get the courtesy of an answer back, so I will try again. I am constantly amazed at the inferior quality of Eros products that are being sold to the public. I started watching Indian movies about 6 yrs ago and it was always Eros product that I bought. The quality of the video was always washed out and had bad sound, but I thought that was the way it was supposed to be until I saw some Tamil films on the Ayngaran label. They were always clear with great sound. I found out a few years later that they use the original negatives to master the original. Then Telugu companies started following in their footsteps and began releasing quality product on KAD and IDREAM labels, but EROS still had bad quality. YASRAJ and ADLABS and a few other companies have great quality video and sound and Shemaroo which releases some of the same EROS titles always remasters their product. When I bought SHEMAROO’s version of TAAL I couldn’t believe the difference from the EROS copy. IT had vibrant colors and great sound. Why does a big company like EROS continue to release subpar DVD’s? Salaam-e-ishq had a soft looking picture and the right and left sides of the pic was cut off!! Now I’ve just rented Temptation concert which I saw in person and once again a bad quality product. The pic looks like it was mastered from a bad VHS copy. It is pixilated and is blurry and the sound is muffled just like a bad pirate copy and to make it worse instead of just letting us watch the performances it was all jazzed up with special jump cuts and slow motion which ruined it. I turned it off after 15 min! I know it is not a pirate copy,because the store I rent from does not sell pirate DVDs.
I hope someone will read this and maybe think about improving the product. Their is even a website which has a forum that talks about how bad EROS quality is. I will always look to SHEMAROO for my products from now on. I sure hope they have the Temptation concert.
Thanks,
Jeff Eletto
I almost fell off my chair when I received this reply :
Dear Mr. Eletto,
Thank you for your email.
I would like to assure you we have taken your comments seriously and I have raised the query with our technical team. We do follow the procedure of transferring movies from the original 35mm print to create our masters, process which is called telecine. As regards to movie “Taal” we have released four different versions in market over the years. I am assuming the copy you have may be the first version, which would logically be of inferior picture and sound quality. Technology is advancing year on, so the quality of products are improving and we assure you we are committed to maintaining and uplifting quality of our products. The Temptation DVD is limited by the source material, but since there was a high demand for this product we released it on the best available quality. I would like to apologise for our products not meeting your expectations and your custom is valued, rest assured we are striving to provide the best quality and enjoyable Indian entertainment.
Best Regards,
Krishna Venugopal
Eros International Ltd
I wrote Krishna back and gave him the website links that discuss how EROS is a piece of shit and they ruin every movie they release. Of course I never heard back , but all of the sudden a few weeks later EROS buys into AYNGARAN. I didn’t realize the power of my emails!
Tags: Tamil
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DVD qualities are bad??? They just keep getting worse… if you hate Eros for their quality, try renting a Shemaroo DVD… The people at Shemaroo seem to be making DVDs in the Handicraft Industry or something… the quality of Shemaroo DVDs is so bad that some of the movies look like those 80s – pirated Camera Print videos. It’s horrifying that movie houses turn a blind eye to the quality and Shemaroo and such keep bagging more movies for their kitty. This is bad and clearly shows that the producers are more interested in making money (valid point) and turn a blind eye to what terrible quality of products the consumer is receiving (plain blasphemy)
I had no idea about this. Eros DVDs are all about quantity. The picture quality is and 5.1 mastering are such crap. The image is full of defects, values in the black areas are so corrupted. Ayngaran on the other hand for most A-grade films had great picture quality and sound. My only complaint with Ayngaran DVDs were the horrendous subtitles, gramatically incorrect. Heck even the English was all wrong. Only the Mani Ratnam movies were decent because his company probably proofed them before the DVD went out into the market. Still not A-grade subs though. Hopefully Ayngaran maintains and builts on its current standards.
Off late, I have been fairly impressed with the quality of Adlabs DVDs. I found the Black Friday transfer to be pretty clean, though the sound could have used some more work.
shemaroo has vibrant colors? :o that’s news to me :-? when did this happen??
fuck eros n shemaroo. Piracy zindabad. dont u gusy hav dvd-wallhas who can get u the pirated dvds..without paying much n good quality also. now thtas a desi thing, i guess.
phoenix.. even pirated DVDs are out of date boss.. aaj-kal tho sab kuch online hota hai.. [today-tomorrow everything happens online] why even rent a pirated dvd when people can watch movies (including new releases) online?
:-? Feeling very shameful to admit but despite the craps they produce, the DVDs/VCDs by YRF are the best. Though I don’t own a YRF DVD (Maybe I will opt for DDLJ), local cable channel airs them very frequently. The rich cinematography is perfectly translated to a great colour texture om DVD. Craps like FANAA, DHOOM:2, KANK “look” great on DVD. Unfortunately enough, they are not going to spend even 1% of the DVD mastering costs in screenplay. On the other hand, we have Lare Rahho Munna Bhai in Eros. Misery! Yash Raj should have bought the home video rights.
EROS, Shemaroo, KAD, Warner, Roadshow, Village Cinema – pirates, all of them. Agree with Vijay on the quality of subs re Ayngaran. Pyramid DVDs used to have better subs. Guess they don’t exist no more. Rest assured, every DVD maker is out there to just make an easy buck, having an easy growth at our expense.
Phoenix, spot on! I pontificated in the same forum against piracy some time ago. Pity! 2 years of living down under has changed me. I am on my way to renting/buying pirated dvds just to watch a few movies that I otherwise cannot watch.
YRF transfers tend to depend on the movie. They released old classics like Kaagaz Ke Phool, Pyaasa etc, and those transfers were quite horrendous. Especially considering how high contrast the images are, the blacks look flat grey in the YRF DVDs. I have a VCD of Kaagaz Ke Phool I bought in India like 10 years ago that looks better.
As far as the newer films are concerned, the sound and transfer of “Black” was just superb! Veer Zaara had scratches visible, though the sound was not bad.
Ayngaran is still the best Indian one I have seen. The transfer of Kandukondain Kandukondain is gorgeous, although for some reason they cropped the aspect ratio into a 1:1.85 after the initial reel. Kinda sad. The Kannathil Muthamittal transfer is great!
I also found the Kaleidoscope DVD of Guru to be pretty decent as far as picture was concerned. I just wish they watermaked Kaleidoscope logo wouldn’t keep popping up from time to time. The sound was pretty bad. The 5.1 track was distorting on many occasions, and surprisingly the 2.0 track sounded better than the 5.1.
Have Kagaz ke Phool on Ultra. Seems ok. The sound is nice, but not the picture quality. Anyway cant complain since its a BW movie.
Black Friday on Adlabs was good. Btw, any idea of how the DVD/VCDs being pumped out by Moser Baer is? At least the costs are rock bottom. Any idea of the quality?
is it not true that these DVD wallas have some kind of machines where they can give us only one thing in good quality: either we take sound quality or picture quality, seldom rather rarely both are fine in DVDs of hindi films.
and surprisingly if you take a crap film of any famous star then you may find bit better quality but not with their famous films. why so?
Whatever is the reason but so many times quality of B/W films are better than new coloured films.
The fact is plain and simple. The Indian DVD wallahs do not put money into a full fledged QC department. Unless they start doing that, we wont see any improvement. But we still buy and rent these DVDs because we don’t have much other choice. So their thought process is, fine, people still buy the shit, so why should i put more money in it than I need to?
Also, they don’t seem to take good care of the negative. Film preservation seems to be almost non existent, unlike the US where studios pump millions of dollars into preservation. Show me a single Hollywood movie on DVD, where you see scrathes visible on the image. Only in Indian films do we see scratches that exist on the original source negative. The audience doesn’t care as long as Shahrukh Khan’s face is visible.
Filmmakers and cinematographers, sound designers need to take the initiative, and see the film through the entire process of DVD authoring as well, to ensure perfection. Very few seem to be interested in making that effort and would rather move on to their next project. The production company or studio also needs to see the DVD market as a viable one, and employ the film crew to sign off on the final home video product. That level of commitment seems to be lacking. So until someone takes that initiative, we are going to continue getting shitty quality DVDs.