Swiadek Koronny (Poland - TiM) impressions

[kannisto]

I received Swiadek Koronny and Testosteron from e-dvd.pl yesterday and watched the first one last night. The English title appears to be "The State Witness" according to the English subtitles.

Case pics:


Technical aspects as reported by WinDVD9 Plus:

Video stream:
Type: VC1
Bitrate: 24.000 Mbps
Framerate: 29.970 Hz
Resolution: 1920x1080
Aspect ratio: 16x9
Audio stream:
Type: DTS-HD High Resolution
Bitrate: 2046 Kbps
Number of main channels: 5
LFE Channel: Present
Sampling Frequency: 96khz
Bits Per Sample: 24

I'm not sure what the video bitrate reported by WinDVD means exactly as it doesn't seem to be a calculated average...

Audio bitrate seems to be constantly 2046 Kbps.

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 or so (fills the whole 16:9 screen)
Subtitles: English (optional)
Runtime: 97m:34s
Extras: Making of (SD), Trailer (HD), photos (no English subs for any extras)
Disc data size: HD-15, 13.8 GB (14 903 640 064 bytes).
Disc is not AACS protected.

There are 2 forced trailers played back first when disc has been inserted.
At least fastforwarding works to get them out of the way.
There is a title menu but no pop-up menu.

Story:
The movie is about a criminal reporter / documentary maker who has been working on a new documentary project and gets an opportunity to interview a former mob mid-level boss who has become a "state witness", and whose testimonies have helped to bring down a lot of members of the criminal underground. Spoiler Below

The reporter has a personal agenda as well as he is trying to find out details of a crime incident where his wife got killed. Details of this plot point are revealed gradually throughout the movie.

There is also a camerawoman working with the reporter. The main part of the story is about the interview and past events in the mob circles are recounted as flashbacks as the former mob boss is telling his story.

I found the movie to be quite interesting, though nothing groundbreaking. The acting was pretty good all around and the story keeps a good pace. It was a fairly decent crime thriller that's made a bit more interesting because of the "foreign environment".

PQ and AQ:
Picture Quality has some issues. The image is mostly very sharp and detailed but there are also some quite grainy or noisy scenes and the overall look is kind of HD video -like rather than film-like. There was some noticeable motion judder in a couple of aerial shots. Also some aliasing was noticeable. Video bitrate seems to jump up and down quite much, though that may not be a problem in itself. The colors were quite good and consistent, quite realistic and not oversaturated. Overall the PQ had some very positive points but also a few negatives. At a couple of scenes I was impressed by the great level of detail in some close-up shots of faces.

Audio on the other hand is pretty good all around and I didn't notice any audio issues.

It's currently only available in Polish online shops. I ordered it from e-dvd.pl (my first order there) and they shipped it within a couple of days and it arrived in about one week from the time I had place my order.

[GamerGuyX]

I don't understand how some of these imports can lack a pop-up menu...

[caheaton]

They have a movie I would very much like to order, but not speaking Polish I've found it very difficult to navigate their website. I can get my order in the shopping cart but that's about it. Any suggestions for how to use their site, or perhaps an email address for them (assuming they speak English?)
Craig

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by caheaton

They have a movie I would very much like to order, but not speaking Polish I've found it very difficult to navigate their website. I can get my order in the shopping cart but that's about it. Any suggestions for how to use their site, or perhaps an email address for them (assuming they speak English?)
Craig

Check out the recent posts in import title sticky thread. I posted some instructions on how to order from e-dvd there yesterday. I can't easily post a direct link right now as I'm accessing by mobile phone's browser right now.

[Arkadin]

sounds good Kannisto.
Thanks for the impressions.
somewhat amazing that here we are in January 2008 finding 2 new Polish films to be perhaps the best "recent" titles on HD DVD. sad on one hand, but kind of neat on another.
hopefully the European market will give us HD DVDs for years to come.
we can dream about it right?