Probably the finest example of Bollywood romantic comedy musicals and all of their grandest traditions (or cliches depending on your viewpoint). Everything from boy-meets-girl to disapproving parents to songs in the rain are on display here. And while even in 1995 at the time of the film’s release this may have sounded old hat, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge ('Braveheart Will Win The Bride') had its story told with such earnestness and enacted with such gusto, it seemed as though it was as fresh as ever - and still does more than ten years later, where it continues to play in Indian cinema halls.

'DDLJ' depicted NRI (non-resident Indian) life in a resoundingly positive way for the first time in Hindi films. Its lead romantic pair of Londoners Raj and Simran - played by young up-and-comers Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol - were shown as being completely and happily integrated into Western culture and society, but still deeply cherishing their Indian roots. Their ensuing love story sees them defy their elders not in a reckless way, but in a sly, intelligent fashion that maintains both their parents’ traditional values and their own modern ideals. This smart, progressive scripting catapulted Bollywood popularity overseas and made Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol the massive stars (and most beloved on-screen couple) they are today.

Although we've now had one VCD and umpteen DVD releases of DDLJ, there has still yet to be a definitive version for our home video systems. Hopefully a new, professional HD master will see the light of day in due course as Blu-ray and HD DVD take off, but for now this loathsome lot will have to suffice.

Starting things off with the bootleg disc by Prism, the heavily-cropped letterboxed video is barely tolerable with much of the picture's left and right-hand sides missing and colours are faded and washed out. Sharpness is quite decent however and one major plus of the DVD is the audio which presents the film in its original 2.0 stereo with clear dialogue and music score (some crackles and pops still present themselves though). Another defect of the disc is some occasional brief cuts in the film totalling a minute or so, likely due to a bad negative source. English subtitles are included, but are lazily translated and offer none for song sequences. No extras are featured and the DVD menus are static and cheap-looking. All in all, about what one could expect out of a bootleg release.

The Yash Raj Films DVD is the most widely available and probably the best choice overall, but still boasts massive faults. The anamorphic video passes itself off as OAR, but is actually cropped on all four sides giving a bogus ratio of 2.30:1. Clarity and colour/contrast renditon is even poorer than the Prism bootleg with a hideous rusty, yellowish tint marring the image and tons of clipping in light/dark areas. The disc's audio is devoid of the crackling affecting the Prism's, but is less clear and far more echoey thanks to a phoney 5.1 remix. The DVD makes up for some of its errors in the form of its special features on disc two which are plentiful and entertaining. The supplied English subtitles are also very well written while the animated menus are extremely cute.

Bodega's French release is virtually identical to YRF's except with different, more generic menus, a French subtitle track and PAL video. Bodega have produced their transfer in a terribly amateurish fashion however, by simply converting the NTSC video from the Yash Raj disc to PAL (cropping the picture even further in the process) rather than by using the original master. This has resulted in numerous side effects, most notably large amounts of ghosting, blurring and edge enhancement. The disc's supposed 5.1 audio is likewise identical to YRF's and an additional DTS track on offer is merely one that has been converted from said 5.1 source. A DVD to avoid for sure unless you really need those French subs.

The Rapid Eye Movies release in Germany is also a more-or-less repackaging job of the YRF DVD, but REM have thankfully used the original master to produce their PAL transfer properly. The image finally shows the film in its uncropped ratio of 2.35:1 and REM have even used a quick colour-correction filter to improve the rendition somewhat, though the colours and brightness levels still look far from perfect. One slight annoyance to report is some occasional jerkiness to the video as a result of a few dropped frames that occur at edit points. This may not be noticable to everyone though. On the audio front, things are less rosey. REM have pitch-corrected the 5.1 track taken from the Yash Raj disc, messing it up even more than it was to begin with and the track now sounds garbled in addition. A big cock-up there. Elsewhere, the DVD has the same special features provided as the YRF and Bodega discs - but only German subtitles are available. And let's not mention those dreadful menus cut 'n' pasted from YRF's disc.

Another, more rare bootleg is also out there somewhere that is labelled merely as 'Limited Edition'. This version is far superior to the Prism release thanks to fairly detailed picture quality and an even clearer 2-channel audio track. Though letterboxed and cropped down to 1.85:1, the image actually still shows about as much as the YRF DVD – just in different areas, due to less cropping at the top and bottom of the screen. Colours are more accurate on this release, but do tend to look murky on occasion and an abundance of dirt and speckles that appear at edit points also spoil things somewhat. This is a single-layer disc and as such, the low bitrate reveals MPEG compression artefacts, but on small TV screens this still may just be the best DDLJ looks on DVD (if you can track a copy down). A lack of subtitles, extras and anamorphic enhancement knock several points off though.

Finally, on to the video CD released by Ultra. Normally a VCD shouldn't be worth comparing with a DVD, but in this instance its worth taking a look due to the sheer leap in image quality we see here. True, being a VCD, the usual pixelating artefacts and blurred edges that come with all low-resolution, low-bitrate sources rear their ugly head here, but the colour and contrast levels are so superior to any other version of DDLJ out there that it's almost unreal. Had this transfer been featured on a DVD, it would by far be the leader of the pack - and all despite the bog-standard mono audio, cropped video, lack of English subtitles, menus and extras. As it is however, it sadly makes for just a curiousty item.

Overall then, the Yash Raj Films release gets my reluctant vote. Had the German DVD not had such a mucked-up audio track it may have had the upper hand, but that along with a lack of English subs puts it into second place.

Score card	Prism	Yash Raj Films	Bodega	Rapid Eye Movies	Limited Edition	Ultra VCD
Video:	4/10	5/10	3/10	7/10	6/10	5/10
Audio:	7/10	6/10	6/10	4/10	8/10	3/10
Menus:	2/10	7/10	4/10	2/10	2/10	0/10
Extras:	0/10	7/10	7/10	7/10	0/10	0/10
Winner: Yash Raj Films

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