Cartoon Classics-Volume 1

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	None
Rating
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	74:06
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Fred Tex Avery Frank Tashlin Robert Clampett Chuck Jones
Studio Distributor	Flashback Home Entertainment	Starring	Mel Blanc Pinto Colvig
Case	C-Button-Version 2
RPI	$9.95	Music	Carl W. Stalling

    This is not an expensive DVD. Heck, it's quite a cheap DVD. Does that mean it's lousy? Nope. The fact that it's poor quality is what means it's lousy. This disc has been put together cheaply from public domain material.

    What does public domain material mean? It means that the person, people, or company that owned the copyright in these cartoons has allowed that copyright to lapse, so anyone can copy and distribute them without paying any royalties. These cartoons are quite old (understandable - copyright, by default, lapses 50 years after the death of the author) - the ones for which I could read copyright dates come from the 1940s.

    This is not a fancy disc. The menu offers only three options:

• play movie
• resume play
• select a chapter

    Well, that answers any questions about extras. What about the content? These cartoons are interesting, mostly for historical reasons; we can see some of the early stages of development of characters who are familiar to us today. I'm assuming you have some interest in American cartoons, and so you'll be familiar with characters like: Tweety and Sylvester (and Granny), the chicken hawk (from Foghorn Leghorn), even Pinky and The Brain.

    The cartoons are:

• Aloha Hooey - a longish cartoon showing competition between a smart-alec seagull and a country-hick crow for the attentions of a pretty hula girl
• Cagey Canary - perhaps the very first version of the classic Tweety and Sylvester cartoon, although the bird and cat don't have names, and the bird is a more normal canary-shape
• Booby Hatched - not a plot that I've seen before, concerning a duck and ducklings versus a wolf
• Birdy and the Beast - now the bird is much closer in shape to the Tweety we know (not perfect, and the wrong colour, though), and we hear that familiar catch-cry: "I tort I taw a puddy tat"
• I Got Plenty of Mutton - another one that's not familiar to me - a wolf versus "Killer Diller", who is a rather aggressive ram.
• The Squawkin' Hawk - a baby chicken hawk called Henery Hawk, who looks and acts a lot like the chicken hawk in Foghorn Leghorn (but Foghorn Leghorn doesn't appear)
• Eager Beaver - story of a klutz of a beaver
• House Hunting Mice - a very early variation of Pinky and the Brain, perhaps, meet the automated "house of the future"
• The Cat's Tale - a very early version of Tom and Jerry, but with Sylvester instead of Tom
• Pack Up Your Troubles - now we have a cat called Sylvester, this time pitted against a woodpecker

    If you're not interested in these cartoons for their historical value, I can't really recommend them. The quality is dreadful, and there are some story elements (such as a mother poking a wolf in the eyes) that would definitely qualify as politically incorrect today.

Video

    This disc has been prepared at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced. This is likely to be accurate for cartoons this old. I suspect the reason is not in a desire to be accurate, but rather because the master for this material was probably videotape (very old, heavily used videotape - you'll note that I haven't even specified VHS!).

    The image is more than soft, it's blurry (the worst loss of focus is around 20:36), grainy, with some low-level noise. Some sections even show what looks a lot like over-modulation distortion, because the image is over-bright (I suspect someone turned up the video level to try to compensate for fading - it doesn't work - look how washed-out the image appears around 26:17). There's flaring (over hot white).

    Colour is poor. There are sections which exhibit mistiming between the luminance and chroma signals - the colours don't line up with the black and white lines. Have a look at 67:08, where there's some nasty colour shimmer. There's more than a little colour bleed, too.

    There are film artefacts of various kinds - spots, specks, flecks, hairs, reel markings, hairs, you name it - there is little point in listing them, because there are so many.

    There is aliasing on some of the black edges, but less than you might expect, because the image is so soft. There are some interlacing artefacts. There's quite a bit of background shimmer, but it's unlikely to be the MPEG encoder.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. There's not enough material here to warrant a second layer.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided only in English, in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono at 192 kbps. This is a Rice Bubble soundtrack - you know, snap, crackle, and pop! Plenty of hiss, too.

    The dialogue, what there is of it, is reasonably clear.

    The score, by Carl W. Stalling, is classic Merrie Melodies / Loony Tunes fare - loud orchestral stuff, full of clichés.

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not called upon. In fact, you only need one speaker.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are no extras.

    Region 1 has been spared this disc.

    Old cartoons of only historic value on a dreadful DVD. Heck, this quality would be dreadful on a VHS tape!

    The video quality is awful.

    The audio quality is poor.

    The extras are conspicuously absent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall