Tom Jones

Classic RnB & Funk

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Music	Theatrical Trailer(s)	No
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	No
Year Released	2000	Commentary Tracks	No
Running Time	62:11 minutes	Other Extras	No
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Perry Rosemond
Studio Distributor	Massive Warner Vision	Starring	Tom Jones
Case	Transparent Brackley	Starring	Tom Jones
RPI	$39.95	Music	Assorted

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	No	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	No	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	Full Frame	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	No
Subtitles	None	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	None	Action In or After Credits	Yes, in credits

Plot Synopsis

Wales is somewhat famed for its heritage in song, and the massed choir at Cardiff Arms Park is a joy to hear. However, perhaps the best known export of that wonderful little country is one Thomas Jones Woodward - better known to the world as Tom Jones. With a string of worldwide hits spanning the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as a stunning collection of women's underwear, one would have thought that a DVD containing those hits would have been a welcome addition to the discography. What we in actual fact get is Tom Jones mildly murdering some classic tunes, and the listing of those unfortunate tracks is:

Proud Mary
Honky Tonk Woman
Got To Get You Into My Life
In The Midnight Hour
Hot Legs (with Tina Turner)
I Can't Turn You Loose
Don't Let Go (with Isaac Hayes)
Take Me To The River
Right Place Wrong Time
I've Got To Use My Imagination
Fame
We Can Work It Out (with Chaka Khan)
Higher And Higher
I Need Your Lovin'
Such A Night
Celebration
Pain (Tina Turner solo)
Ladies Night (Oh What A Night)
A Few More Kisses To Go (Isaac Hayes solo)
I'm Walkin'
I Know You I Live You (Chaka Khan solo)
The Finale - Try A Little Tenderness, Stagger Lee, Show Me, Givin' It Up For Your Love, Knock On Wood, Satisfaction and Twist & Shout

Now do not get me wrong - Tom Jones is a great entertainer, but the choice of material here really does not suit his style, nor does it suit the production. As a result what should have been a ripping experience ends up being something of a slaughter of good songs. Take the year of 2000 shown above with a very large pinch of salt: the music would appear to be excerpts taken from his television show that aired during the 1970s I believe. That unfortunately is the main problem here, as the demands of the television production tend to submerge the voice and thus emasculate the songs.

Transfer Quality

Video

"Superb Digital Picture and Sound Quality - Dolby AC-3 Stereo"? Hardly. Although to be fair, I am presuming that this is indeed sourced from the television shows and therefore the problems are source-related and not transfer related.

The transfer is presented Full Frame and is not 16x9 enhanced.

On the presumption that the excerpts are sourced from various television shows, the somewhat inconsistent nature of the transfers are to some extent explainable. The overall result is a program that is rather short on sharpness and detail. However, individual clips vary from being curiously flat in appearance with a quite appalling lack of depth of field to being actually quite decent considering the origin and the age of the source material. The main problem is the lack of detail in the transfer, most especially the lack of shadow detail, which really does not aid the viewing pleasure at all. This is anything but a clear transfer, which compounds a general problem of what seems to be grainy source material. There did appear to be some problems with low level noise, but this may of course be a reflection of the inadequacies of the source material rather than the result of any mastering issues.

There is an even more curious variety in the presentation of colours here and it is quite remarkable how inconsistent the individual episodes were. There is nothing here that you would confuse for stunning depth of tone and vibrancy of colour. Indeed, this is as riddled with lack of tonal depth as you are likely to find in a DVD I would suspect. It does not help the situation that even in individual clips, certain cameras display a distinctly different colour palette, thereby contributing quite alarmingly to visual acuity problems for those with poorer eyesight. At their best, the colours are decent and nothing more, with a richer tone to them that at least produces some form of depth to the image. At their worst, the colours are very indistinctive. Additionally, certain clips display some rather obvious colour saturation problems. Colour bleed does not appear to be a problem at all in the transfer.

There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were no real problems with film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. Film artefacts were not much of a problem here. The main issue is the inherent flaws in what I am guessing would be a video tape source.

Audio

Of the DVDs I have so far reviewed from this source, it would be fair to say that the audio quality has not been shatteringly good. This is unfortunately the poorest so far.

There is only the one audio track on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Dialogue and vocals were reasonably clear and reasonably easy to understand.

There did not appear to be any real problems with audio sync in the transfer.

The big problem here is that again there are quite wide fluctuations in the source material, but unlike video which really you cannot do too much about, I would have thought that by some judicious mastering that they could have at least got the different clips to an equivalent sort of volume level. As it is, there is a wide range in the audio levels between clips: nothing that will have you diving for the remote to prevent the house rocking itself to pieces mind, but just a rather annoyingly noticeable difference. The better clips are reasonably decent with a reasonable sound presence that at least conveys some sort of emotion. However, the poorer clips really suffer from sound that is terribly recessed, almost as if they were recorded from a two track machine positioned at the very rear of the studio. In these instances, you certainly feel no emotion whatsoever from the vocals, and that is what so badly lets down this DVD: his vocal style, as well as the choice of songs, really needs to have a very present recording to let the emotion out. As it is, Tom Jones singing into a paper bag (which actually might be a better description of the sound) is not guaranteed to get anyone up out of their chairs. There is no surround channel or bass channel usage here at all. Overall, this is a sadly inadequate soundtrack for a vocalist of this style.

Extras

R4 vs R1

This appears to be identical around the world, so there is no essential difference to favour this version over any other.

Summary

Tom Jones-Classic RnB & Funk is a DVD seriously flawed by the source material, to the extent that there is little here that lets Tom Jones shine. Strictly for the very serious fan only.

A barely adequate video transfer, but the source material does not permit better.

A poor audio transfer.

No extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Pioneer DV-515; S-video output
Display	Sony Trinitron Wega 84cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder	Built in
Amplification	Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers	Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL