Dio-Evil or Divine (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio & Animation Interviews-Cast-Ronnie James Dio Featurette-Behind The Scenes Music Video-Push (Featuring Tenacious D) Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	138:57 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (72:24)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ken Botelho
Studio Distributor	Spitfire Warner Vision	Starring	Ronnie James Dio Jimmy Bain Simon Wright Doug Aldrich Scott Warren
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

    Ronnie James Dio is a name that has been synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal for almost thirty years. His catalogue of highly influential material is unparalleled, with tenures as vocalist in such legendary bands as Rainbow and Black Sabbath, as well as his renowned solo career which has ensured him legendary status among many loyal fans and fellow musicians.

    This live concert was recorded at the Roseland Ballroom in New York on December 13th, 2002 and manages to cover most stages of Dio's extensive career. The set opens with the title track from Dio's latest album, Killing The Dragon and features several other new songs scattered throughout the performance, which also includes some classic Black Sabbath and Rainbow material.

    As you would expect, the line-up of musicians on stage is exemplary and their musicianship is second to none. This is in fact the same group that recorded the recent Killing The Dragon album and their prowess on stage matches their studio effort. Among the musicians is former Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain and guitarist extraordinaire Doug Aldrich, who pulls off some incredible fretwork throughout the gig.

    Evil Or Divine is an excellent live performance that showcases an incredible vocalist and hard rock legend in action.

Video

    I wish I could speak as highly of this DVD as I can of the man himself. The video transfer is far from perfect and deserved much more attention than it has obviously received.

    The video transfer is presented in 1.33:1 full frame and is obviously not 16x9 enhanced.

    There are few examples of sharpness in this transfer, which looks very much like it was sourced from videotape to me. Black levels are particularly ordinary on shots of the crowd and exhibit poor shadow detail. There are many instances of low level noise in the transfer, usually on the coloured backdrops.

    Colours appeared intense and oversaturated, with most brightly lit objects taking on a halo effect. This effect was particularly eye-catching and irritating.

    There are no film artefacts to be found, however there are many cases of MPEG over-compression and aliasing throughout the feature that are too numerous to mention.

    There are no subtitles available on this disc.

    This disc is dual-layered, and contains one of the most jaw-droppingly neglectful layer transitions I can recall. What could be more ridiculous than placing a layer change in the middle of a song? This abomination is located at 72:24 during the track Heaven And Hell and made me laugh with disbelief initially, but now just irritates me no end.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three audio options, including Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts, as well as the default Dolby Digital 2.0.

    Brilliant vocal delivery is what Dio is renowned for, and that is what we get here. The vocals are always prominent in the mix and are enunciated perfectly throughout the performance. I had no problems whatsoever understanding the lyrics, but bear in mind that after listening to most of these songs for many years I know them back-to-front.

    There is a disturbing audio sync issue with this disc that affects all three of the audio options. The video content of the DVD is consistently ahead of the audio, which I find is most irritating on images of drummer Simon Wright because his snare and cymbal hits don't nearly match what is heard. Altogether this is a most disappointing effort.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts mixes are identical, with very little surround activity apart from some minor spill to the rears now and then. These soundtracks are almost completely frontal, with most instruments panned to the front left and right channels, while the vocals and snare drum are placed in the centre. The Dolby Digital 2.0 effort is very similar, but is considerably louder than the other two options. My preferred track of the three was certainly the dts, which contained much more depth and presence, as well as crisper tones from the cymbals and hi-hats.

    The subwoofer gave a few isolated thuds on occasion, but did not sound as though it was receiving any dedicated usage. Again, I expected better.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Interview (11:22)

    This is a brief but enlightening interview with the man himself, covering a range of subjects from his relationship with New York and September 11, to his thoughts on religion and the philosophies behind his songwriting. Altogether this is a revealing and interesting interview that left me wanting more. The footage is presented at 1.78:1 without 16x9 enhancement.

Behind The Scenes (4:27)

Music Video - Push (5:26)

Photo Gallery

    Firstly, it is worth noting that the Region 1 release is coded for all regions, contrary to the packaging.

    As I have already stated, our Region 4 release has irritating audio sync issues associated with each soundtrack, placing the image ahead of the audio. We also have an unbelievably neglectful layer transition, placed during the track Heaven and Hell which interrupts the song considerably. This pause may be less of an issue on players that have a large playback buffer, however the fact remains that it is there, and it could be better.

    Both video transfers have an average video bitrate of 7Mb/s and suffer from similar colour bleeding problems, which stem from the video source and not its transfer to DVD.

    The Region 1 release has entirely different issues, mostly concerned with video quality.

• The full frame 1.33:1 image has been matted as 1.78:1. That is, black bars have been placed on the top and bottom of the image, and 16x9 enhancement hasn't been included. I have verified this using screen captures and quite a bit of screen area has been chopped out of the Region 1 transfer for no apparent reason, other than to create a fake widescreen image.
• The level of MPEG grain in the NTSC transfer is unlike anything I have seen and is terribly hard to watch.
• Quite a number of digital post production effects have been scattered throughout the Region 1 video transfer, perhaps to hide the video compression issues - these include black & white portions of video and a strange, jerky effect that seems to skip frames. The jerky effect is used prominently during Simon Wright's drum solo, and looks plainly cheap and ugly.
• The Region 1 disc doesn't have any of the audio sync problems that have been introduced into the Region 4 release, which is a bonus.
• The Region 1 layer transitional pause is placed between the songs Fever Dreams and Holy Diver and is much less disruptive.

    So there you have it, you can choose either the butchered, over-compressed video transfer of the Region 1 release or the out-of-sync Region 4 with a terrible layer transition.

    It's a hard call, but I'm going to favour the Region 1 NTSC release on this occasion because despite its poor video quality at least some effort has been made to make the layer change pause less disruptive, and of course the audio is perfectly in sync with the video.

    The video transfer is far from perfect, with many colour and audio sync issues.

    The audio transfer features a dts mix that is relatively frontal but is spread well across the front soundstage.

    There are a couple of interesting extras included to round off the package.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall