BUY

General		Extras
Category	Music	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1992	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	64:46 minutes	Other Extras	Cast Listing
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,3,4,5,6	Director	Milton Lage
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Eric Clapton Nathan East Steve Ferrone Chuck Leavell Andy Fairweather-Low Ray Cooper Katie Kissoon Tessa Niles
Case	Super Jewel
RRP	$39.95	Music	Eric Clapton

    In my opinion, Eric Clapton: Unplugged is the very best of the MTV Unplugged showcases. Just Eric and his band, on stage, instruments in hand and no help from synthesizers or artificial effects. Music as it should be. Raw, honest, and from the heart - just take a look at the enthusiasm Ray Cooper has for his percussion instruments!

Video

    In addition to the PAL Region 4 DVD, I also had on hand the NTSC laserdisc version and the Compact Disc version, all of which I compared for video and audio quality.

    This DVD is dual sided and features an English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on one side of the disc and an English Linear PCM 48/16 mix on the other side of the disc. I predominantly listened and watched the English Dolby Digital 5.1 side, though I did compare sections of the English Linear PCM 48/16 side.

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The first thing that struck me about this transfer was the lack of fine definition in the image - long shots of the performers were blurred and indistinct. Close-ups were fine. This is not to say that definition is poor - on the contrary, it is relatively good, and in fact far superior to the laserdisc version, but it is not up to contemporary standards. Shadow detail is excellent and there is no low level noise. This actually surprised me, as the laserdisc suffers a great deal from low level noise, whereas the DVD shows solid and crisp blacks. Clearly this artefact is not on the source material. In fact, the relatively poor quality of the laserdisc in comparison to the DVD surprised me, given that they seem to have been taken from the same source material, and made me appreciate just how much better a good quality DVD can be in comparison to any other consumer video format.

    Comparing the two sides of the DVD shows that the Linear PCM side of the DVD has slightly less definition, which is not surprising as additional room is needed for the Linear PCM soundtrack, which is encoded at a data rate of 1536 Kb/sec versus 448 Kb/sec for the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    The colours were reasonably rendered throughout with little in the way of over or under saturation apparent, which is a little unusual for a concert video, though you must remember that Unplugged events are staged for television.

    There was a small segment of MPEG artefacting at 29:28, at the end of Layla, on the transition between a pull-back and a close-up - the picture loses colour momentarily at this point and MPEG macro-blocking becomes apparent for a fraction of a second. This is only apparent on the Dolby Digital side of the DVD - this surprisingly does not occur on the Linear PCM side of the DVD. Soon thereafter come two minor video defects which are minor skips in the video stream.

    In addition to these video defects, there is also some considerable, but minor, cross-colouration apparent in this transfer. Eric Clapton wears a black and white closely striped shirt, and this frequently develops a purple cross-colouration artefact, giving away the fact that the source material for this transfer was composite in form rather than component. This same artefact affects his microphone slightly, and the frets of his guitar occasionally.

Audio

    Dialogue and words were always easy to understand and clear.

    There were no audio sync problems with this disc.

    The music encompasses a range of styles, from the emotional Tears In Heaven to the considerably more boppy Rollin' and Tumblin'.

    The surround channels were used for ambience only with some slight mixing of the crowd noise into the rears. Vocals were firmly anchored in the centre channel, and the music was spread evenly over the left and right front channels.

    The .1 channel was in use nearly continuously but quite unobtrusively to lend support to the music.

    In comparison, the Linear PCM version carries only two channels, left front and right front. I could detect no sound degradation between the uncompressed PCM version and the compressed Dolby Digital version of the mixes, and indeed preferred the more precise placement of vocals and instruments afforded by the Dolby Digital version of the soundtrack.

Menu

Cast Listing

    The video quality is acceptable.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
15th December 1999