Michael Ball-Live at the Royal Albert Hall (1999) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Music |
Featurette Biographies-Cast-Michael Ball Gallery-Photo |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1999 | ||
Running Time | 89:15 (Case: 111) | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Steve Kemsley |
Studio
Distributor |
Banana Split Prodctn Universal Pictures Home Video |
Starring | Michael Ball |
Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
RPI | $36.95 | Music | Various |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame | English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/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 | Yes, in the featurette |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | Yes, closing credits over applause and farewell |
He has won several awards including second place in the 1992 Eurovision Song Contest, 1998 Variety Club of Great Britain Award for Best Recording Artist, and in 1999 was presented with the Theatregoers Club of Great Britain's award for Most Popular Musical Actor.
His 6th UK tour went on sale at the close of 1998 and sold out within weeks. During the months of April and May 1999, he entertained and delighted 74,527 people at 25 concerts. Not satisfied with such a gruelling tour, Michael went on to perform a concert in Amsterdam, two shows at the Liverpool Pops Festival and open-air concerts at Howard Castle, Glamis Castle and Longleat House.
The culmination of his 6th UK tour was a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, which is the programme presented on this disc. The concert included the following songs, spread over two "Acts":
Act I | Act II |
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The concert includes a fairly patchy mix of songs closely associated with Michael (including Empty Chairs, Empty Tables from Les Misérables and Love Changes Everything from Aspects of Love), songs written/adapted specially for him, as well as covers of songs made famous by other singers - such as Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Celine Dion, Tom Jones not to mention the theme song from the Friends TV series and a medley of songs from the film Blues Brothers.
Michael still looks pretty cute with his dimpled cheeks and looks a little more, shall I say "well-rounded" since his Les Misérables days. His audience seems to be at least 90% female given his penchant for singing easy listening numbers. I think he has a very good singing voice and I admire his professionalism and his stage persona but he's not really my cup of tea.
Sharpness, detail and colour saturation are all acceptable (though not reference quality).
The video source is relatively clean and surprisingly, there were few MPEG artefacts given that the DVD producers have chosen to try and fit everything onto a single layered disc. I detected occasional minor ringing and pixelization, but never at an annoying level. Other artefacts detected including shimmering and aliasing every now and then, but once again nothing major.
The only annoying aspect of the transfer is that on my home DVD player the disc does not provide any status information at all during play (such as chapter number, running/total/remaining time) apart from title number, although the chapter selection buttons do work. This made it very hard for me to tell where the concert was up to and how much more material was left at any given point. Status information was provided on a PC with a DVD-ROM drive.
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The sound of the audio track seems to be lacking in extreme high frequencies and extreme low bass, sounding more like TV broadcast quality rather than CD quality.
There were no issues with the dialogue or audio synchronization.
The source is obviously a stereo master that has been remixed for 5.1 surround, as I can detect no more than the faintest murmurs coming from the surround speakers. Despite that though, the sound coming from the three front speakers has reasonable depth.
I doubt that the subwoofer would have been actively engaged.
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NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
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Review Equipment | |
DVD | Pioneer DV-626D, using Component output |
Display | Sony VPL-VW10HT LCD Projector, ScreenTechnics 16x9 matte white screen (254cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
Amplification | Denon AVR-3300 |
Speakers | Front left/right: B&W DM603; centre: B&W CC6S2, rear left/right: B&W DM601 |