Later...with Jools Holland-Later...Legends (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Custom Play Interviews-Cast-10, With Subtitles Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	122:02 (Case: 121)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (71:52)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Matthew Amos Janet Fraser Crook
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Jools Holland Various
Case	Six-Sided Star Clamp
RPI	$34.95	Music	Various

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536Kb/s) English Interview Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Spanish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Some of the greats have died and their contribution here is testament to their musical legacy. I'm thinking here particularly of Johnny Nash and Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash) - both these artists deliver classics of their genre. Joe Strummer's urgency and passion seemed even greater in 2000 than 20 years before when New Wave was breaking the mould of Transatlantic discoid muzak, and as for Johnny Nash - well he's just Johnny Nash and that great voice just gets better. In the same league as Nash but thankfully still alive is Willie Nelson, who shows you still get a great sound picking a nylon string classic guitar with 2 holes in the soundboard! Leonard Cohen's voice just gets more gravelly and better and he delivers a great Yiddish ethnic rendition of Dance Me To The End Of Love. Jeff Beck looks absolutely ageless and delivers that overdriven guitar in unchanging 70's fashion. Elvis Costello, like Joe Strummer, makes up for the passing years with an urgency and freshness to the guitar delivery whilst still retaining vocal talent and Bryan Ferry puts such passion into his unplugged rendition of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow that I though he was going to have an apoplectic fit and cark it. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, and Lou Reed all age gracefully, but still command a substantial stage presence as a true sign of greatness. And the girls - well Chrissie Hynde is as sexy and sultry as ever and delivers her second hit, Kid, with a vitality and freshness that defies her hard years in the biz'.

    What about the duds? Well, there's thankfully few of these. Paul McCartney - sorry to his fans, but I really don't know why he bothers anymore. Ronnie Spector likewise, and poor old Ian Dury, although he's never really had much of a singing voice, he really should have stayed at home that day - but the Blockheads remnants were worth hearing again! And the in-betweenies ? Well, I'm not sure if Robbie Williams has really earned a spot in the Legends Hall of Fame just yet but he certainly delivered an entertaining and spirited rendition of Suspicious Minds. Steve Winwood, Georgie Fame, The Kinks and Paul Weller all offer credible  performances but they didn't really set me alight - that distinction would have to go to Al Green's rendition of The Bee Gees' How Can You Mend A Broken Heart or REM's The One I Love or even Patti Smith's Because The Night, all of which made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle (must be a sign of old age!).

    Well for the record - here are the tracks included - phenomenal value for money compared to many music DVDs - you can't fail but to find something you like here (surely?):

Video

    The presentation is in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is about as sharp as you'd expect from non-digital video and I have no complaints here. Shadow detail was adequately rendered without significant low level noise. The annoying habit of shining spots into the camera frequently produced oversaturation, notably on the REM track, and there's significant grain in the poorly lit George Benson track.

   Colours were richly rendered but we suffered a bit with too much of the blue and red floods loved by music set lighting directors. This led to a little colour bleeding. The coloured backdrops were also prone to posterization such as in the blue backdrop at 11:47 or the red stagedrop at 12:22.

    The only transfer artefacts of note were minor aliasing in the usual spots of guitar strings, microphone shields and stage edging. Otherwise, the transfer was clean without obvious defects and other MPEG defects.

    Subtitles are only available for the interviews, not the songs, and are available in English, German, Spanish and French. They were an accurate portrayal of the spoken word.

    The disc is RSDL with a transition point at 71:52 during one of Jool's intro's - it leaves him looking a bit surprised for a split second but it's not intrusive.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio transfer is very good - on 10 Years of Later we had a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track whereas on this DVD we have a sonically superior LPCM 48/16 recording. Yes, I know it's 8 bits less quantisation, but it's not compressed and I thought it offered a fuller sound than on the previous release.

    There is just the one audio track on this DVD; English LPCM 48/16 2.0 stereo.

    Dialogue was well rendered and I had no problem making out any of the lyrics that I cared to listen out for.

   The only notable audio out of sync that I noticed was on the acoustic guitar strumming on Patti Smith's Because The Night at 29:11 where the rhythmic accompaniment didn't quite coincide with the onset of up or down strokes.

    There was no surround or subwoofer activity - just for fun I wired up the subwoofer via the high level inputs from a 2 channel speaker setup, crossed over at 40 Hz and the sound was very good, with plenty of bass rendition from the recording. Worth a try if you play much 2 channel music!

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Programmable Selection

    As with the previous DVD you can programme a selection of tracks to be played - the trouble is you need to know the chapter numbers of the track which aren't shown on the programmer, or even on the case, so I have included them in the above table!

Interviews

Music Credits

    As the heading suggests, songwriters for the performance. It is interesting that there were two Chuck Berry songs - Paul McCartney's was one - who was the other?

    The video was very satisfactory and only really suffered loss of detail on large scale projection.

    The 2 channel audio was of excellent quality.

    The extras were pretty supernumerary and not of great interest.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall