Barney-Let's Play School! (1999) |
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Barney-Let's Play School! (1999) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Childrens |
Theatrical Trailer-9 Menu Animation & Audio Scene Selection Anim & Audio Featurette-Barney's ABC Animals! Karaoke Featurette-Song Sampler Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes DVD-ROM Extras-Games |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1999 | ||
| Running Time | 49:20 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Fred Holmes |
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Studio
Distributor |
Lyrick Studios Roadshow Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Bob West David Joyner Julie Johnson Jeff Ayers Patty Wirtz Jeff Brooks Maurie Chandler Marisa Kuers Austin Ball Angel Velasco |
| Case | Village Roadshow New Style | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | Jonathan Smith |
| 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 | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, various still images | ||
Now, to the plot synopsis. Aww, do I have to? I mean, really, it's all about a guy in a purple suit dancing around on the screen keeping the kiddies amused, isn't it? I mean, this isn't Shakespeare here, now is it? OK, well, here goes nothing.
BarneyTM Let's Play School features BarneyTM, Baby BopTM, BJTM and Four FriendsTM. The four friends are not really trademarked, but everything else is. Hmmm. Baby Bop laments the fact that she is too young to go to school and so Barney creates a fantasy school where Baby Bop is the teacher. They sing songs, hold hands, kiss and hug the guy in the purple suit and generally do things that will keep the littlies amused for 50 minutes and the cynical adults reeling from the saccharine sweetness of it all. That is, if you're actually watching instead allowing the TV to baby-sit your kids, which appears to be the fundamental purpose of the BarneyTM franchise, as well as selling your kids the latest $79.95 all-talking-all-singing Barney plush toy.
The transfer was sharp, clear and bright throughout. Barney, with his vibrant purple colouration dominating, tended to be a little less defined than those around him because of the nature of blue and purple on video. Shadow detail was good, though there is not a lot of it actually present during the show. There was no low level noise, indicating a very decent source for the master video.
The colours, as are to be expected from a children's DVD, are vibrant, with large splashes of primary and secondary colours spread throughout the transfer. As mentioned above, Barney's purple comes across a little less defined than his surroundings which makes for a slightly odd visual effect, almost disconnecting Barney from his surroundings at times. Colour bleeding was not a problem despite the preponderance of bright, heavily saturated colours in the image.
There were no MPEG artefacts seen. There was one instance of minor aliasing - during the zoom-in into the story book of Little Yellow Riding Hood. There were no film nor video artefacts seen.
I viewed this DVD on two different DVD players, and they exhibited a number of minor glitches with this DVD. Firstly, on both players, the subtitles defaulted to on. Secondly, on the Start SD-2001VNK, the counter kept resetting at every chapter stop. On the Toshiba SD-2109, no elapsed time counter was available at all, so something slightly odd has been done with the authoring of this DVD.
The review disc was gold in colour, with the packaging indicating a dual layer DVD. However, there appeared to be no layer change during the transfer and the total of all file sizes on this DVD is a mere 4.3Gb, which is slightly less than a single layer's worth. It would not surprise me if production versions of this DVD were actually presented as a single layer DVD.
The dialogue was always clear and audible, with no sync problems noted.
The musical score was provided by various composers and this consisted of a series of children's songs. Hence, they were all bright, boppy and all quite short.
The surround channel was silent throughout this transfer.
The subwoofer supported the music, but that was about it.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video is of very good quality.
The audio is of acceptable but unremarkable quality.
The extras are quite good.
| Video |   |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Start SD-2001VNK/Toshiba SD-2109, using S-Video output |
| Display | Loewe Art-95 (95cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL). |
| Audio Decoder | Denon AVD-2000 Dolby Digital decoder. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | 2 x EA Playmaster 100W per channel stereo amplifiers for Left, Right, Left Rear and Right Rear; Philips 360 50W per channel stereo amplifier for Centre and Subwoofer |
| Speakers | Philips S2000 speakers for Left, Right; Polk Audio CS-100 Centre Speaker; Apex AS-123 speakers for Left Rear and Right Rear; Hsu Research TN-1220HO subwoofer |