| This Week's Highlights |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
analysis w/e 14.5.11 |
DVDs out 9.5.11 |
|
@ DVDfever Youtube |
|
|
|
|
May 11 2011 
DVDfever co uk
|
The worst possible time for the Senokot to kick in.
Despite being filmed last year, this is one of the few concerts still presented in 4:3 fullscreen, so I'm presuming that's how it was recorded. This is a shame as the colourful sets and expanisve crowd shots would've benefitted from the extra width of a widescreen filming. I'm sure I spotted some artifacts along the way in some of the fast stage scenes, but the camera cuts quite fast at times so it's understandable if the encoding has a little catching up to do on occasion. Although the package is released on two discs, this hasn't increased the overall cost of the set and it allows the concert to be played out in full-rate Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 24-bit mastered surround sound, the latter being my preference and, thankfully, you still end up with the instruments only coming from the front with echoing sounds and audience reaction reaching out to the rears. I say "thankfully" because sometimes sound mixers use the addition of DTS and DD5.1 surround to throw the instruments all over the place to create an articifial sound that wouldn't have been heard at the concert.
Applaud or I'll shoot you all dead with this guitar.
The extras on disc 2 begin with The Band and what they get up to on a day off, such as Nicko McBrain playing golf and lead singer Bruce Dickinson indulging in his passion for fencing. Each of these last between 6 to 10 minutes, but there's only five as Nicko and Dave Murray share the same 'day off'. Strangely, thanks to the way the disc has been encoded, you can't access the individual titles directly, nor will it allow you to measure the bitrate. Why do some companies do this? It stops you instantly getting to the any part in the extras that you want by clicking along the timeline. A Day in the Life is more like 10 minutes in that day as the band travel between gigs. Following this is the Ross Halfin Photo Diary, a 7½-minute look at their tour across South America in 2001. As Halfin, the official band photographer explains, "If there's bits missing, or gaps or it jumps too much for you, this is probably due to alcohol-fuelled memory loss." and puts commentary to the pictures he took. There's also credits for the disc and a list of what you can expect on the website at Iron Maiden.com To access the hidden easter egg, head for the 'photo diary' and press left to reveal an angry face in which sound engineer Kevin "Caveman" Shirley explains briefly how their sound console has levels which go up to 12 and that they tried to make them go to 13, but they "blew the fucking shit right up". Whoops! The menus are nicely animated and scored and were created by the same design company who did those for Lawrence Of Arabia and The Patriot. Containing some music or the band's mascot, Eddie, being nasty, they are good and feature DTS and DD5.1 sound, but they are only a few seconds of content each on a very short loop. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Italian and the package comes in an attractive digipak which folds out to reveal the crowd and stage at the Rock in Rio gig on January 19th, 2001, although as Halfin pointed out, it was actually January 20th since the band went on stage for their turn at 12.02a.m.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B 37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier. PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
|
