Take 40 Platinum (2003)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Music	Booklet Main Menu Animation CD
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	80:00
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Various
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	The Androids Delta Goodrem Kelly Rowland Craig David Jennifer Lopez Kelly Osbourne The Corrs Darren Hayes Britney Spears Dido Anastacia Laura Pausini
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Various

    This is yet another in the ever-increasing list of music titles released by Sony Music featuring a compilation of artists. Unlike the Never Looked So Good series of budget discs, which contained just artists from the Sony Music stable, this disc features a more conventional setup, in that artists from other labels have been included under license. What results is a far more varied, far more professional, and far, far more competent selection of tracks and videos.

    It is named after the Take 40 radio program which airs each week right around the country on some 89 radio stations and has for many, many years been the radio equivalent of the ABC television music program Countdown . This disc is essentially a best of the best (well recent best anyway).

    It has been released as a two disc set, with one disc being a DVD featuring 21 videos, and a second disc a CD featuring 20 music tracks. It earns the platinum title from the fact that the featured artists have all achieved platinum status in Australia   The producers have committed to producing one Take 40 compilation every year, so this shouldn't be the last time we see one.

    There's a wide variety of artists featured in clips on the DVD disc. International acts such as Craig David, Anastacia, The Corrs, and Dido are joined by the big name Australian acts such as Delta Goodrem and Killing Heidi.

    The following videos are included on the DVD. For the CD track listing see the list in the extras section.

Video

    These are all reasonably recent videos, with the oldest being Killing Heidi's Weir, which was made in 2000. So as expected they are all pretty much free from serious imperfection and are bright and quite colourful.

    There are a variety of aspect ratios present in this transfer, but all are not 16x9 enhanced.

    There is grain in some videos, but its appearance appears to be an artistic decision. There are no issues with edge enhancement or shadow detail. There is also no low level noise.

    Colours are excellent in general. With the wide range of styles we get a wide range of palettes and saturation levels. There are no faults with either.

    There are no instances of aliasing or MPEG artefacts.

    Unfortunately there are no subtitles for the lyrics

    This is a single layered disc only, so there's no layer change with which to contend.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio soundtrack on this disc. It is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at a bitrate of 448 Kb/s. Despite the absence of a PCM stereo soundtrack I still found the one on offer to be rather good, with clear stereo separation and superb dynamic range. It is a clean and powerful two channel soundtrack and is the highlight of the disc.

   Vocals are prominent and without any apparent audio sync problems.

    There is no surround channel or subwoofer use.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Booklet

    A 16-page full colour booklet listing all the tracks on both the DVD and the CD with a small paragraph explaining how the song came about and what success it may have enjoyed on the charts.

Main Menu Animation

CD

    The CD is classed as an extra here, simply because of the fact that we have focused on the DVD as the main content. The CD contains 20 tracks which are listed below. Much like the video tracks, there is something for everyone here.

CD Track Listing

    This disc is not available in Region 1.

    A well-rounded selection of artists are featured on the Take 40 Platinum disc. All 40 artists featured have achieved platinum sales in Australia and it is promised that a similar disc will be released annually featuring each year's platinum artists. Bring them on, I say.

    The video quality is excellent. Given the youth of the material it is exactly what I expected.

    The audio, despite the lack of a PCM stereo track, is still pretty good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall