Bear in the Big Blue House-Dance Party (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	92:05 (Case: 96)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Hugh Martin Mitchell Kriegman
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Noel McNeal
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Steve Charney Jared Faber Peter Lurye

    Bear in the Big Blue House is an active and musical children's series from the Jim Henson Company, with plenty of interesting characters and catchy songs. Four episodes are included on this DVD, focusing on energetic dancing and great music with a jazzy and sometimes rocky feel. In these stories Bear explores the world of music and dance along with his friends Tutter the mouse, Ojo the little bear, Pip and Pop the Otters, Treelo the Lemur and my little one's favourite, Luna the moon. There are a number of American words and phrases present in the dialogue such as 'faucet', but these shouldn't present any major issues to young viewers.

    1. Dance Fever (24:02) An energetic Treelo drops into the house when everyone is trying to have a quiet, relaxing day. Soon she helps bear get an itch to dance the Cha Cha, then Tutter's Grandma visits and together they dance the Grandma Mambo!

    2. Dancin' The Day Away (24:00) Bear and Ojo dance the Flamingo together, then bear touches on many other types of dancing, all of which have one common theme - fun! While searching the house for his maracas, bear discovers that Tutter is suffering from a dancing phobia that needs curing.

    3. Music To My Ears (24:01) Bear demonstrates to us that music can be found anywhere, anytime. Treelo channel-surfs on the radio and finds all different kinds of music, from classical to Latin. Tutter discovers that his voice is actually an instrument and finds the confidence within himself to sing for Ojo's new orchestra.

    4. Listen Up (24:02) Bear shows Ojo that interesting sounds and noises are in the world all around us, and inspires him to head out on a camping trip. While in the outdoors, Bear and his friends listen to the many different sounds of nature.

    It's noted on the cover slick that these four episodes were previously available on VHS under the titles Dance Fever and Music To My Ears.

Video

    This video transfer is presented in an aspect of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The series of episodes presented here have a good degree of clarity and sharpness, but is often betrayed by a slight lack of vertical resolution. Undoubtedly this is a direct result of the NTSC source. Colouring is bold and evenly saturated at all times, making it particularly eye-catching to children.

    MPEG over compression is only visible on a few minor occasions and doesn't become too obtrusive. The most common culprit of MPEG artefacting is Bear's fine fur, particularly when shot up-close. Film artefacts are obviously not an issue, although aliasing was quite obvious and presented some ugly jagged edges on occasion.

    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 soundtrack on this disc,presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and encoded at 224Kb/s.

    The dialogue and character voices of the show are always distinct and easy to understand, even though a number of them tend be a bit squeaky and high pitched. There are no issues concerning audio sync at all.

    The stereo soundtrack brings across the music of the program with a good deal of clarity and depth. Just about every style of music you can imagine is represented here in some form and it is all catchy and memorable. There are many examples of panning within the stereo field and the soundtrack as a whole is very lively and well produced.

    There was no surround activity or subwoofer response in this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    None.

• Sing along songs.
• English and Spanish subtitle streams.

    Although the Region 4 disc is bare when it comes to features, I believe our release represents better value for money.

    The video transfer is adequate for a children's series.

    The audio transfer brings across the musical elements of the show with ease.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall