Billy Connolly-Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London/Live 1994 |
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Billy Connolly-Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London/Live 1994 |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy | Main Menu Audio & Animation | |
| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | ? | ||
| Running Time | 182:48 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Nobby Clark |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Universal Pictures Home Video |
Starring | Billy Connolly |
| Case | ? | ||
| RPI | $29.95 | Music | None Given |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame | English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) | |
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.33:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | None | Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
This disc actually features two whole performances, coming in at over 3 hours of Billy humour! Can you handle it? I dare you to watch it all in one sitting. You would certainly come out the other end of it saying a certain F word with far more vigour and frequency. The first performance on the disc is Live at the Odeon Hammersmith in London, recorded in 1991. The second is entitled Live 1994, and is recorded in (surprise!) 1994.
I enjoyed the 1991 performance more than the Live 1994 performance, often laughing uproariously. Of particular note are the stories about a dog's life, bad water in Spain, something involving a scuba suit and a mining lamp, and the female rights movement, amongst many other topics. If you are a fan of Billy Connolly then don't hesitate, grab this DVD right now! Recommended.
Both features are presented in their original 1.33:1, non 16x9 enhanced, aspect ratios. The performances would have been recorded for TV/VHS release so this aspect ratio is expected.
There are no subtitles for either feature.
This is a dual layered disc with each feature having an entire layer to itself.
Live at the Odeon Hammersmith
This feature was reasonably sharp throughout without any major problems. There are some very grainy shots of the audience taken in low light levels (4:32). However, this is no fault of the transfer. Shadow detail was acceptable but I found that Billy's legs were often lost against the background due to his black leggings.
Colour was fine, although there was not a lot of opportunity to make much of a statement.
Where this feature was really let down is in the MPEG artefacts department. There were numerous compression artefacts that were often quite distracting, generally about the size of large film artefacts. They appeared more like garbled pixels than anything else. You can see a few examples around 11:20 (left shoulder), 26:08, 27:45, and so on. There are too many examples to list here. To me, it looks like some sort of mastering fault, as the artefacts are not specific to compression problems as far as I can tell. Film-to-video artefacts are limited to a few touches of aliasing around 2:40 (shirt), 35:29 (microphone), and 36:00 (stand). There were no noticeable film artefacts.
Live 1994
Overall sharpness is a little improved in this feature. Shadow detail is also marginally better with no problems making out Billy's lovely black leggings.
As with the previous feature, skin tones were fine but there was no need for any amazing use of colour.
The nasty MPEG artefacts noticed in the first feature did not make an appearance. The main problem was limited to aliasing, but this was relatively minor. Aliasing was more frequent in this feature, with some occurrences at 2:56 (arm), 41:00 (mouth), 84:54 (bottle), amongst others. There were no noticeable film artefacts.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail | |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization |  |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
Each feature had a single English Dolby Digital 2.0 track, encoded at the lower bitrate of 192kbps.
As mentioned above, dialogue quality is quite good, excepting certain passages in Live 1994. This can be heard around 39:00 where Billy is demonstrating a "real" laugh. The distortion is caused by the small lapel microphone being overdriven by Billy's powerful vocals, and cannot be blamed on the transfer.
Audio sync was fine throughout - I did not notice any particular problems.
The music playing during the opening title sequence for each feature was the only music to be heard, unless you count Billy's lovely musical renditions. Fortunately (unfortunately???), this was all delivered without any audio problems.
The surrounds and subwoofer took a little holiday for the entirety of this review.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use |  |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video quality is acceptable.
The audio quality is more than adequate for the material.
What extras?
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer 106S DVD-ROM with PowerDVD 4.0 scaling to 864p, using RGB output |
| Display | Mitsubishi VS-1281E CRT front projector on custom 16x9 screen (270cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Onkyo TX-DS787, THX Select |
| Speakers | All matching Vifa Drivers: centre 2x6.5" + 1" tweeter (d'appolito); fronts and rears 6.5" + 1" tweeter; centre rear 5" + 1" tweeter; sub 10" (150WRMS) |