I'm a videshi who got into Bollywood/learning Hindi during quarantine and has continued on and off since then. Aamir Khan is definitely my favorite actor and I watched a lot of his movies from the 2000's/2010's. A lot post-2020 Bollywood movies I've seen are so edgy/nationalistic and definitely not the same vibe - instead, recently I've tried watching some of Aamir's older movies like Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak.
The movies themselves are pretty good but we need to talk about the appallingly bad quality that they are available in. For those two it seems like the "HD" version is a 240p rip run through an awful AI upscaler filter.
Elsewhere in the world, there are distribution labels like Criterion and Arrow which remaster old movies and release them on Blu-ray. This involves re-scanning the original film stock and often times they get the original film director/editors (if they are still alive) to supervise the process. Also they always record a bunch of bonus features, commentaries with directors/surviving cast, video essays by film historians, interviews, behind-the-scenes, blah blah blah. And you can find films from all over the world that are being given the proper treatment by these various labels.
This needs to become a thing in India! Studios and cinemas probably still have thousands of old film reels which are just sitting in warehouses and rotting. If opened up and re-scanned, these films will be preserved in much higher quality forever. They would look completely different (so much better) than some streaming platform running an upscale on a DVD and calling it "HD." There are still film buffs who buy movies from these labels, having more classic Bollywood movies on Blu-ray could increase Bollywood's popularity inside those circles.
From what I can tell Blu-ray never really became successful in India (back when discs were being sold, they were asking for ~700 or ~800 rupees per film - is this still a lot?) and streaming services have seemingly taken over movie distribution. But on Blu-ray there are much higher quality standards. A Blu-ray disc can fit up to 50GB (if used up completely: the movie looks and sounds AMAZING) whereas on a streaming service the movies (even in 4K) max out around 20GB. I don't know if this has yet caught on in India but a lot of people in North America / Europe have gotten tired of "enshittification" of streaming services lately (removing titles, reducing quality, raising prices) and are moving back to physical media.
I'm also a video editing nerd and I have come to appreciate higher quality video which you can only get on discs. Some modern Bollywood movies even nowadays still occasionally release on Blu-ray in Germany and Japan; the 2000's/2010's era movies didn't print a lot of discs and they are now rare/very expensive. But the quality of the films on disc by far outshines anything that streaming could give.
I still think there are a lot of hidden gems of old Bollywood that aren't appreciated enough either in India or abroad because they are not available in a good enough quality. There should be a push to re-scan and actually rejuvenate these older Bollywood movies.
