BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio and Animation
Rating
Year Released	1991
Running Time	48:54 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,3,4,5,6	Director	Jim McKay Michael Stipe
Studio Distributor	Warner Reprise Video Warner Vision Australia	Starring	Michael Stipe Bill Berry Mike Mills Peter Buck
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$39.95	Music	R.E.M.

    This is another collection of great songs from a great band. This is also another DVD that R.E.M. fans can rush out and add to their collections, and there is enough atypical R.E.M. DVD here to even pique the interest of non-fans.

Video

    The concert is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and obviously is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The first two songs are actually very decent, professionally-done videos of broadcast quality. They are sharp and detailed, with just the odd intended lapse to make sure you know you are watching an R.E.M. video. The next two songs start the descent into the typical R.E.M. appearance, not especially well-detailed and certainly not sharp, but still better than decent. Love Is All Around is a vastly different style as it is actually from the MTV Unplugged show. This is very sharp and well-detailed. The acoustic version of Losing My Religion was recorded on the BBC Late Night Show, and is also much better than the usual R.E.M. effort - although not as good as the MTV effort. Thereafter, the videos are shot on Super 8, and display the usual lack of sharpness and definition that we have come to expect from such material. This material displays the usual lack of detail and presents something of a consistently diffuse image. There is a significant grain problem throughout these transfers, once again reflecting the Super 8 film stock, and the resultant images are in general anything but clear. The usual caveat of any problems being source material problems applies once again.

    The colours are again all over the place in the transfer, with the first two videos and the TV show-sourced material being significantly different in style. They are nicely saturated and have a nice vibrancy to them, as befits the intended use of the material. The rest of the programme is a range of black and white and colour material that is significantly undersaturated. If you are looking for some great colour then you will not find it here, a characteristic of the R.E.M. material that has appeared on DVD thus far.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There did not appear to be any significant film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. There were no real film artefacts noted.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The music and vocals come up very well in the soundtrack.

    There are no significant audio sync problems with the transfer, although a couple of times Shiny Happy People seemed to be a little out of sync.

    The soundtrack made makes no use at all of the surround channels, nor the bass channel, and this is just like listening to a compact disc, and a quite decent one too. There simply is nothing much wrong with this soundtrack at all, other than the fact that it is not a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The great music on offer here gets every chance to shine, and in general it does.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
7th October 2000