Katyn (Poland - TiM) impressions and pics

[kannisto]

I received this from Poland (www.edvd.pl) today just as I was about to leave home for work. I didn't have time to take a look at the PQ/AQ yet but I snapped some quick case pics already. More info will be updated here soon!

Entry from "Titles Available for Order" in the import titles info sticky:

Katyn (Poland - TiM)
edvd.pl $43.59 (zł99)
merlin.pl $48.44 (zł109.99)
dvdmax.pl $52.81 (zł119.90)
rockserwis.pl $42.50 (€27.33)
Xploited Cinema $42.95
Note: Polish audio with optional English subtitles.

Case pics:


I'll try to watch this tonight and will post more info after that.

[tormond]

Looks like they came through for you without having to deal with Polish speaking individuals

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by tormond

Looks like they came through for you without having to deal with Polish speaking individuals

Yeah, complaining in the forums is a sure way to get the disc delivered within the next half an hour

I'm glad I was still at home as it was sent by registered mail so the mailwoman would have taken it back to post office if I had not been there to receive it in person.

[kannisto]

There's a promotional Polish website for this movie, with English version available as well:

http://katyn.netino.pl/en/

[kj23]

sounds interesting. looking forward to your impressions.

[kannisto]

I watched this movie last night. I think it's a really good and powerful movie, it made a strong dramatic impact. The cinematography is really beatiful, the acting is subtle and strong and the ending of the movie is really memorable.

The movie tells a very tragic true story from the 2nd world war in Poland. There are no war battlefield scenes in the movie, it's more about the loss and suffering of the victims and about the propaganda machinery at work. The movie also includes quite much documentary type information. It's not a good movie to watch when you are looking for light hearted entertainment as the subject is very dark and sad and the movie doesn't shy away from showing the horrors of what happened in a very straight and powerful way.

I think it's a good idea to study a bit about the subject of the movie before watching it e.g. by reading what's written in the official promotional site and some comments in IMDB as there's not much in the way of background explanation in the movie itself.

This is definitely one of my favorite European imports. For PQ I would give it 4.5 and for AQ at least 4, I also liked the music a lot. The picture is always sharp and has very good level of detail. In some of the darker scenes there was quite much grain in some of the background elements and textures like clothing but it didn't distract much. The colors were beautiful with an autumn-like subdued palette. My audio setup is not so high end, so it's difficult to evaluate audio in detail, but the sound field was immersive and there was quite much surround use for crowd noise etc. I feel that this movie basically demands multiple viewings, I would have been quite willing to watch it again straight away after finishing it if it had not been 2am by then...

And finally some words of warning:

IMDB lists the OAR as 2.35:1 but the presentation on the disc was filling the whole 16:9 screen. I think they have probably opened it up for the HD DVD and other home video presentations. The cinematography looked excellent with this presentation as well. I've not seen it in a theatre so I can't compare.

The disc fails to load in 2 of my 3 HD DVD setups, my RD-A301 and LG GGW-H20N can't read it at all, they give up loading after a moment. I tried with both a few times and the result was always the same. However, in my HD-XF2 it works like a charm, no problems at all. I think it may imply that some buyers may have problems with playback depending on what player hw they have. HD-XF2 (Japanese model) is basically the same as HD-A2. I think at least 2nd generation Toshiba stand alone player owners should have good results but others might have problems if my disc is representative of them all. The disc looks perfectly fine from visual point of view, brand new and flawless so I guess there might be something tricky with regards to authoring on this disc.

I couldn't check the technical details of the disc on my PC because my LG drive couldn't load the disc. My HD-XF2 showed the video encoding to be VC-1 and audio to be DD+. I think the bitrate of the DD+ track might be at least 1.5 Mbps as sound quality was good and in my impression clearly better than most discs that use lower bitrates such ast 640 kbps.

Previous TiM releases that I have (Testosteron and Swiadek Koronny) didn't have any problems loading on my LG drive. This disc seems to be HD-15 like those previous ones from TiM as well - I'm positively amazed at the great PQ and AQ on this disc with such limited disc space.

So I would highly recommended this release but buyers should be aware of potential hw compatibility issues (if the other discs are similar to mine).

[Arpeggi]

This disc did not work at all on my A35.

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by Arpeggi

This disc did not work at all on my A35.

Yeah, I think it only plays in 2nd generation Toshibas and possibly 1st generation and 360 add on too. At least my 3rd generation recorder and LG PC drive are no go but it works well in my HD-XF2.

It's unfortunate, as the movie is very good in my opinion and the PQ as well.