By now, just about everyone has heard about
Bollywood - India’s equivalent to Hollywood. India’s thriving film industry is not only an integral part of their culture; but in fact, a way of life - their
joie de vive. Truth be told, Bollywood is actually a subset of the entire Desi movie scene. "Desi" roughly translates to ‘of the homeland’ or ‘from the country’. Tollywood is another facet of India’s film industry, while lesser-known, pertains to films of Telugu origin in contrast to Bollywood which refers to Hindi-language films. Even American production companies
Warner, Sony Pictures and Columbia have waded into the Bollywood scene.
The critically acclaimed 10-time Oscar-nominated film
Slumdog Millionaire has indeed thrust Bollywood into the world’s limelight, once and for all. However, Slumdog isn’t really a Bollywood movie at all: but a Western flick that embraced a popular Bollywood cast and crew. While Slumdog has enjoyed widespread international success in terms of box-office take (mostly post-nomination), it has slumped in India since its exceptionally late theatrical début on January 22nd - which is more than one full month after it was leaked to the P2P/BitTorrent level on Christmas Eve, 2008. Which brings us full circle to the
Desi P2P scene.
Perhaps
Slumdog is an exaggerated (or even poor) example for what we’re getting at - but the truth is, most Desi/Bollywood films make it to P2P - or more precisely to
Desi Trackers - either the same day of a theatrical release or the day after. Pre-times need not bother exist; most major films hit private Desi trackers within 24 hours as a high-qualityPDVD (pre-DVD), DVDR or some other form of release. It’s a wonder why anyone would visit India’s theatres nowadays, since nearly every movie release is available almost instantaneously at the P2P level. Well, many don’t.
The Desi P2P Scene: About The Movie Releases
The "Desi
Movie Scene" shouldn’t be confused with the "Desi
P2P Scene". While movies/films are likely the most popular release for Desi trackers, the P2P scene also consists of music, TV, stageshow and even religious releases. In Desi P2P, movies are divided into following main categories: CAMs, PDVDs, Untouched DVD9/DVD5, DVD Rips and Encoded/Transcoded/Shrunken DVD5.
The inner workings (politics) of the process in which a movie makes it from a theatrical showing to the P2P level is entirely different than how it’s done in the Western world. In Hollywood, there are many avenues for how a movie can end up on P2P: CAMs (whereby someone records the movie from the audience); TC’s and TS’s; Screeners (where Academy members are given a copy of the film sometimes months prior to a theatre date), and direct DVDRips. In India, screeners are still given out, but not more than one week before it hits theatres (and usually just a few days before). Unlike here, it is somewhat rare to find a Desi film on P2P before a scheduled theatrical release date, although it does occur (but only perhaps 1 or 2 days before, not weeks in advance).
CAMs:
While CAM releases are generally frowned upon in the Western world, and have a very limited appeal due to the poor release quality - this is not necessarily the case in India. In Desi, CAMs can be broken down into two subsets: There are normal CAMs similar to ours, in which a movie is filmed from the seats during a showing, usually with a full audience. For these, the quality is poor, there’s background noise and other undesirables that you would normally find in a Western CAM. But the
other type of CAMs are of much higher quality. These are filmed by HD video cameras in 720p (or in HQ) when the theatre is empty - usually the night before a theatrical release date. Perhaps HQ CAM is a bit of a misnomer here, since technically they’re actually TeleSyncs - with a direct "line" audio source. Often these are upconverted to DVD format, and packaged as PDVDs or PDVD-5s. The image below shows an actual screenshot from a CAM release:
PDVDs:
PDVDs (or Pre-Release DVDs) are the most popular format to find new (unreleased) DVD movies on P2P. The
sources for which PDVDs are made usually consists of HQ CAMs and Screeners. PDVDs have their own subsets, as well. These can be broken down further into the larger PDVD5 format, and smaller Pre DVD Rips (very popular). For Pre DVD Rips, it’s quite common to find many different formats for the same movie (either from different P2P groups, different sizes - 1CD 700 MB and shrunken 400 MB+, audio options - AC3, subtitle options, NTSC/PAL etc). An example of this can be found at BwTorrents, which has more than 10 different pre releases for the film "Luck By Chance". From these options, the most popular pre-releases are the 1CD 700 MB rip (XviD) format.
PDVD Piracy: Aside from PDVDs being readily available on Desi torrent trackers and P2P, PDVDs also have a huge black market trade in the real-world. Perhaps known better by the term ‘Asian Silvers’, these can also be Telesyncs & screeners (usually leaked from screener reels directly from India’s own movie studios themselves), then encoded/authored onto PDVDs and bootlegged to Europe (mainly Germany, France, etc), Asia, and eventually in the Americas. PDVDs are not retail sources.
Not all movies are immediately available as PDVDs, so a normal CAM is the only option until a DVD is officially released to the public at the retail level. One Indian movie production company -
YRF - who manages to put out just 5 movies a year (but they tend to enjoy huge boxoffice successes). YRF movies never become PDVDs, since they keep a tight reign on their screener reels, combined with other security measures. Their film "Dostana" which was released on November 14th, 2008 is a perfect example of this - it existed for months only as a CAM release (and only recently became a DVDRip), something of which is relatively rare in the Desi P2P scene.Smallbudget movies usually take a little more time to make it as a PDVD, due to their limited release.
Untouched DVDR5 / DVDR9:
Just as the title suggests, these are original retail DVDR-5 and DVDR-9 formats.
Shrunken Rips/DVD5s & Encodes/Transcodes:
Most major Indian ISPs impose DL limitations, unless one opts for a more expensive unlimited plan - although the majority of Internet users have a 2 AM to 8 AM "free" time for unlimited usage, which isn’t counted towards the cap. For this,
Shrunken DVDRips and pre-releases are gaining popularity (since typically these are between 400 - 450 MB, considerably smaller than 1CD 700 MB sizes).
Encodes and Transcodes come in a multitude of formats, such as M/CCE (manual Cinema Craft Encoder), HCenc (HC Encoder), ProCoder, etc.
DVD Rips:
In the West, movies usually take anywhere between 2 and 8 months to arrive in video stores, or at the retail level. The same can be said for India, except the time spread is usually 2 - 3 months. By far, DVDRips are the most popular movie format in India, and the rest of the world.
Origins of the Desi P2P Scene
DesiTorrents.com was the pioneering Desi torrent tracker, which emerged when torrents started back in the day; their roots lay in hubs and IRC clans. Founders of DcT (DcTorrent) & BwT (BwTorrents) were all ’spinoff’ sites from the original DT, and most Desi trackers directly or indirectly came from DesiTorrents roots. The one exception to this is the newly-formed (and very promising) ICTorrent.com, who has no connections to other trackers.
BwTorrents was started by ex-DesiTorrents staff back in 2004. BwT’s original owner ran it for almost 2 years along with the present DcTowners/admins, then he went inactive due to real life, trusting the presentBwT owner with the domain name & renewal. When he decided to come back to BwT, it would appear he wasn’t wanted there anymore (to put it mildly). After some controversy, he then left with some of his loyalists, and DcT was born. About the same time, iDesiR.com emerged on the scene. One of their "main guys" left and teamed up with the original owner of BwT to form DcT 3 years ago.
Desi Release Groups
Scene Groups / P2P Groups: There isn’t much of an official "scene" for Desi releases. There are very few "scene release" groups, no preDB (IRC) or dupecheck sites, and
releasing standards that the Western scene abides by doesn’t exist for Desi releasers. The Desi P2P scene mostly consists of various (and numerous) "P2P groups". No scene rules are applied here; altough there are still a handful of scene groups for Bollywood - D3SI, BrG, sn0b, ADNT and a few others. This is not to say that the Desi P2P scene is disorganized - quite the contrary - but
the system in which (movie) releases make it to the P2P level is entirely different. But mainly it’s dominated by P2P groups/Desi Releasers.
In short, Desi release groups are loyal to a certain tracker/forum. DcT, ICT and BwT each have their own ‘groups’ who exclusively put out releases only for that site. This is not to say that these releases remain there solely. An example of this is IcTv - a Desi releaser exclusive to ICTorrent. A quick check on BwTorrents and iDesiR reveal a multitude of IcTv’s releases. This is not a theft - actually IcTv releases first to ICT, and then proceeds to release the same thing to other Desi trackers afterward (many groups do this, others do not). If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then at least ICT had the release
first, and thus the fastest. Here’s a list of the major Desi P2P Groups:
- IcTv - Pre-DVDs, DVD-9s, DVD Rips and few other type of releases. Very fast at new releases, and is exclusiveto ICTorrent.com.
- xDR - All Rounder. The fastest Bollywood music releaser on the planet, one of the fastest movie releasers, very professional, great quality rips. xDR is the official releaser for DcT. Does 1 CD, 1/2 Upscaled, 1/3 DVD and M/CCE releases. "All Rounder" or "allrounder" refers to Desi P2P groups that release just about everything.
- MDR & UDR - both good upcoming teams and allrounders as well.
- DDR - All Rounder - fast with the DVD9’s.
- cF (canuckarfan) - Mostly movies, does just 2 releases a year (but worth it).
- TmG -a good quality dvd ripping team.
- DUS - Mainly Cover Movies and Music Videos.
- CRG - Cam Rips, PDVDs, PDVD Rips and Music Videos.
- DRs (real one with Farooqbhai, the group founder) - Quality DVD Rips
TV Release groups: On Desi P2P, there are only 2 teams which are worthy enough… Desi9 and BwTv. Both are run by experienced oldies, but Desi9 has the advantage over BwTv in both number of releases and quality wise - Desi9 covers a much wider variety of shows than BwTv and also it does custom DVDR’s which are extremely difficult to do.
- Desi9 -Has their own site for RapidShare (web) downloads - Desi9 : Indian Television Forum.
- BwTv - Desi9 = DcT’s team; BwTv = BwT’s team, but it’s certainly agreeable that both are equally great, and BwTv does give Desi9 a run for its money.
TV Watermarking: Both Desi9 and BwTv ‘watermark’ their TV releases. This is to prevent other Desi trackers from hosting their content. There’s an unwritten (but golden) rule among Desi trackers: if a release has any form of advertising or self-promotion for another tracker/Desi Board, then it is not allowed. This goes for MP3 tags in Desi music releases, as well.
An Anonymous Opinion…
I debated publishing this part of the article, but hell - what’s a little controversy? FileShareFreak spoke with an ‘old Desi scener’ who wishes to remain anonymous. But here’s his take on the Desi scene, and where it’s headed.
We left this as-is.
- iDesiR — shit site, works only due to porn, doesn’t have any exclusive releases ofits own.
- DcT — Only thing DcT lacks is forum activity and that’s where BwT has a MAJOR advantage over DcT. In terms of exclusive quality releases DcT has the better advantage (even being what half the size of BwT almost with respect to members, hence the open reg’s now).
- BwT — BwT relies more on scene related releases as it now doesn’t have any home quality release group to calls its own anymore… BwT’s back broke when TmG left for themediasite.net (another inactive board) and the real DRs left for ICT. First they lost TmG, now they’ve lost DRs (Farooqbhai to be exact and his team mates, present Desi release group DRs on BwT = fake noob run by staff just to keep the name going forward). So yeah BwT even now sucks in terms of quality content whilst DcT is getting better everyday.
- ICT — Good newcomer, still has lots to prove, though. Mostly new movies DVD9, PDVDs are released on ICT. Rippers from different groups from other sites and leech here and release on their own sites which they are part of. Same goes for rips. IcTv Movie rips you can find on each and every site of Desi World.
- DT — SUCKS, runs only due to porn, same for desibbrg, idesir and exdesi andall those noob trackers.
Desi Trackers & Pay-2-Leech (P2L)
When money and private trackers are mentioned in the same sentence, it usually ruffles a few feathers. Without question, there’s no finer example of P2L than as found on Desi trackers. But, hey - at least they’re up front about it. Unless you can somehow find an invite, you’ll be stuck paying to get in to these sites which charge money to access or register:
- DesiTorrents - Free to register, but you won’t be able to view anything unless you donate $10 USD.
- BwTorrents - Registration is currently closed. While you’ll be able to view all areas without an account, the torrent links are hidden. A donation of $10 USD will get you in the door.
- iDesiR - Charges $12.50 USD for account registration. (Edit: Registrations are free now)
- ExDesi - 5 € (Euro) to join. (Edit: Registrations are currently open, see here.)
