The Band-Band, The (Classic Albums) (1997) |
|
The Band-Band, The (Classic Albums) (1997) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Documentary | None | |
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | 1997 | ||
| Running Time | 74:46 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | Bob Smeaton |
|
Studio
Distributor |
 Warner Vision |
Starring |
Rick Danko Levon Helm Garth Hudson Richard Manuel Robbie Robertson |
| Case | Amaray-Opaque | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | The Band |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
German MPEG 2.0 (224Kb/s) English MPEG 2.0 (224Kb/s) French MPEG 2.0 (224Kb/s) Italian MPEG 2.0 (224Kb/s) Spanish MPEG 2.0 (224Kb/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 | ||
The members of the band are remarkably articulate in their recollections, and it must be the style of the interviews or the questions chosen, but they seem to be very personable and warm with telling us what they were feeling, and why they did certain things. Again, we have the master multi-channel recordings dusted off and put through their paces, which I happen to love! Nowadays, of course, a song will be spread across maybe 32 tracks or more, and it is a howl to watch Robbie Robertson look at an entire song held on 8 tracks and say with some glee "it's all there!" This is the charm of this disc, and I enjoyed it very much.
The presentation is full frame, with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and it is not 16x9 enhanced.
The recent footage is (typically for this series) wonderfully clear, detailed and sharp. The archival material is, well, all over the show, but is no fault of this disc.
Colours in the recent footage are as usual perfectly clean and well saturated.
There were no significant MPEG artefacts during this movie. Film-to-video artefacts are present in some shots given the very high mastering quality - detail sometimes comes with a price on our interlaced TV system, but it only happens a few times. Archival material has all the film artefacts under the sun, but again this is not the fault of the mastering of this disc.
Dialogue during the interviews was always easy to understand.
Thankfully, there were no audio sync difficulties at all.
The music is typical of its era, sometimes thin, sometimes bass-heavy, but always perfectly authentic sounding. I must say that I have renewed appreciation for MPEG audio encoding from these discs, because it seems quite transparent even at such a relatively low bit-rate. There are no instances of compression which you might associate with low rate lossy encoding, such as sibilance problems and high-frequency distortion. I only mention this because they could have used PCM at least for the English soundtrack, but I doubt it would be worth it for this kind of documentary. Anyway, a fine sounding production.
I listened to this disc in straight stereo mode for maximum quality.
My passive subwoofer helped occasionally, but was otherwise still.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video quality is generally top-notch.
The audio is of the same variable quality as the video, and is perfectly acceptable.
No extras, not even chapters.
| Video |  |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Panasonic A-350A, using S-Video output |
| Display | Pioneer SD-T43W1 (125cm). Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to DVD player. |
| Amplification | Sony STR DE-525 5x100 watts Dolby Pro-Logic / 5.1 Ready Receiver; 4 x Optimus 10-band Graphic EQ |
| Speakers | Centre: Sony SS-CN35 100 watt; Main & Surrounds: Pioneer CS-R390-K 150-watt floorstanders; Subwoofer: Optimus 100-watt passive |