I took Astro’s current promo on Pinoy DVDs to buy my first local movie on DVD – Muro Ami. My question after viewing this is: Is the quality of the Muro Ami DVD representative of Pinoy DVDs?
I shall not comment on the movie’s script, acting, cinematography, scoring or editing because I find these to be mainly matters of personal taste and my preferences in these departments are just as good as anybody’s.
If we take the Fifth Element Superbit as a 5-reference for video quality, I would rate the video quality of this DVD to be a marginal 2.75. Low-light scenes are grainy. Shadow details are missing in these scenes and those details that remain have washed out colors. Passable pictures only happen in outdoor scenes with bright sunlight.
The audio quality of the DVD is even more disappointing. Without any special processing by my receiver’s DSPs, the sound from the center channel seems to come from the bottom of a barrel. Sound mixing is quite spotty. You can hardly hear dialogue when delivered in soft tones because this is overpowered by the ambient audio tracks (chugging boat motor and lapping waves). There is an obvious attempt to remedy this as the sound engineer turns down the ambient sounds on these occasions. However this is done rather abruptly and becomes unnatural. Sound separation and placement was also not well done. You could not readily associate the sound with the onscreen source. This is very disorienting. Moreover, there were intermittent loud audio pops.
Regrettably, I did not see this film in the theater. So I have no basis to say whether the cited deficiencies were already present in the film presentation. But I would guess that most of these are caused by the way the film was transferred to DVD.
I would very much like to add Pinoy DVDs to my modest collection but if Muro Ami is representative of local DVDs, then VHS copies would be sufficient. I just hope that GMA does a better job on Rizal.
(Viewed on Tosh 61” RPTV, Pioneer DVD 533, Onkyo 696.)
