Bambaloo-Squeak, Squawk, Woof! (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Menu Animation & Audio Scene Selection Anim & Audio Interviews-Cast-Meet The Stars
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	73:22
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Tina Butler Mark Barnard
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Angela Kelly David Collins Emma de Vries Adam Kronenberg Roslyn Oades Andre Eikmeier Sean Masterson
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	Dave McCormack Clive Harrison

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bambaloo is an Australian made children's series, co-produced by the Jim Henson company. The story follows a group of characters that live together in a Bambaloo tree house - the owner Sam, Fidget the dog, Jet the fish and Portia the bird. All of the characters besides Sam are puppets, and the puppeteering is up to the well renowned standard of Jim Henson's team.

    This DVD is comprised of two episodes from the Bambaloo television series - Super Jet and The Hottest Spot. Both of these episodes include the show's regular segments such as storytime, mailbag, make with Jake and several upbeat songs. Each segment has its own short theme song, each of which became quite tedious and repetitive for me after a while, but kids somehow seem impervious to such repetition. The basic plot lines of the show cover simple morals such as sharing and caring for those you live with, helping others and tolerating people's differences. The world could certainly do with more of these!

    This is a great television show for kids, with plenty of entertaining games, melodic songs and interesting stories that will keep them entertained for ages.

Video

    This is an average video transfer for a recent television series. Bambaloo is broadcast in widescreen digital, and the transfer is presented in the same aspect ratio; 1.78:1 with 16x9 enhancement.

    The picture is pleasantly sharp and is generally free of grain. Most of the show is recorded in a studio environment, which is bright and very well lit at all times - so there are little to no dark scenes in the feature. There is no low level noise present in the transfer.

    The colour palette is always bold and bright, as you would expect for a children's program. Skin tones appeared true and there were no signs of bleeding or oversaturation in the transfer.

    There are some obvious MPEG compression issues, with noticeable macroblocking popping up now and then. Interlacing problems are also present, but I was the only member of the family who picked up on it so to the average child I can't imagine it would prove to be a major problem. I also noticed a few minor instances of aliasing, but again they weren't overly distracting. Being shot in widescreen digital means that no film artefacts were present in the transfer.

    There are no subtitles on this single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track on the disc, English Dolby Digital 2.0.

    Since the program was recorded in a controlled studio environment, the dialogue quality is very good indeed. All of the character voices are easy to understand, in conversation and song - so kids of all ages shouldn't have a problem understanding the spoken word at all. There were absolutely no problems with audio sync in this transfer.

    The music of the series is very lively and positive. Besides the show's theme, there are four songs on the DVD that tie in with the plot of each episode. I was surprised to see one of the songs is credited to Dave McCormack, formerly of Australian rock group Custard.

    The stereo soundtrack performed magnificently with Pro Logic enabled. Atmospheric sounds such as wind effects and bird whistles were directed to the rears, and during musical segments some percussion and acoustic guitars were similarly directed to the surround channels. The subwoofer also picked up on the soundtrack, adding some bottom end to the soundtrack music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Glancing at the menu system you would think that the disc is packed to the brim with extra material, but this is not the case. Almost all of the so-called extras on this disc are merely links to material that is present in the feature - a glorified scene selection menu if you like.

Menu

Leo Meets The Stars

    The video transfer is good, but it suffers from some noticeable compression issues.

    The audio transfer is very impressive when processed with Pro Logic.

    Despite what the disc says, there are minimal extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall