Ayngaran International

Ayngaran (Tamil: ஐங்கரன்) is a film distribution and production company of Tamil films, based in the United Kingdom. The company has distributed various Indian-produced Tamil films in Europe, North America and Australia. It is also responsible for the production of Tamil films into home media, such as VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray disc. They also operate a chain of retail video stores located in Canada, France and Singapore. The largest retail store is located in Toronto, Canada. The company was named after Lord Ganesha, a popular Hindu deity, who also has a name 'Ayngaran', meaning 'one who has five arms, including his trunk'.^[1]

As of 2008, the company debuted as an independent film studio, opening offices in India. Their first production was the 1996 film, Karuppu Roja with writer Indhumathi.^[2]

Timeline

• 1987: Ayngaran International was established to distributing films.
• 1990: Started selling music, film and entertainment cassettes.
• 1996: Started film production.
• 1998: Started selling music, film and entertainment cassettes in CD & DVD format.
• 2001: Started retail business in May 2001.
• 2008: Ayngaran TV in collaboration with Kalaingar TV was inaugurated on 16 June 2008.
• 2006: Full fledged production started with Ayngaran Productions.

Home media

Television

The company has two owned channels which are Ayngaran TV basically programs adopted from Kalaingar TV and Ayngaran Plus which is based on Jayatv program.

VHS/Audio Cassettes

The company first started to produce and distribute films, customized home videos (such as Isai Thendral), and soundtrack albums in these formats. Ayngaran VHS films did not have subtitles. VHS distribution stopped when DVD use began.

DVDs

The company started distributing films in 1987 and started producing movies in 1996. It also produces and releases certain entertainment videos, namely:

• Digital Isai Thendral - Also known as Isai Thendral on VHS. It is a collection of video songs from new films. It is released in volumes.
• Hits of (Actor's/singer's/musician's name goes here) - Songs that star a specific lead actor/actress, singer or musician. Example: Hits of Vijay or Hits of Ajith.
• Comedy Kadambam - A collection of comedy scenes from the latest films. This is also released in volumes.

In 1998 Ayngaran International, under the supervision of Sunny Audit, began releasing Tamil movies on DVD in their original aspect ratio, with proper anamorphic enhancement. This practise was soon followed by other Indian distributors and has become the norm of Indian home video releases. Ayngaran also introduced the higher quality DTS audio codec and progressive encoding to the Indian home entertainment scene.

Audio CDs

Ayngaran produces multiple soundtrack albums for the same film. They normally have more than one album on the same audio CD. The different combinations for an audio CD are:

• 2 or more newly released movies (e.g. songs of Pokkiri and Aalwar)
• 1 newly released movie and a selection of songs from older movies (e.g. Guru and Hits of A.R. Rahman)
• 1 newly released movie and another with the same lead actor (e.g. Sivaji: The Boss and Chandramukhi)

Some audio albums contain random selected songs released at a time period and is given a special name, such as Konja Neram Konja Neram released in 2005.

Blu-ray Discs

From 2007 Ayngaran released films on the Blu-ray format. The debut release was ‘‘Sivaji: The Boss. This became a landmark as it was the first ever Tamil film to be officially released in HD format.

The discs are the first of its kind to be made directly from the DPX source, without further compression from tape based formats like HDcamSR. This process is currently only Ayngaran & AP International supervised by Shahran Sunny Audit and encoded by AP International.

Retail stores

Ayngaran International has several retail stores across the world, located in cities such as London, Toronto, Paris, Sydney, and Singapore. Other partner sites are located in Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Filmography

Ayngaran introduced the six track DTS sound system to Indian Cinema Industry through their inaugural production feature Karuppu Roja in 1996.

References

External links

• Ayngaran International Official Website
• IMDB Profile