16 Days in September: Games Highlights of the XXVII Olympiad (2000)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Olympics	Main Menu Audio Notes-Roll Of Honour Notes-Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	212:18 (Case: 210)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (111:50)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Various
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Various
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	None Given

    The content of this disc is comprised solely of Australian medal-winning events, except for both 100m sprints. This was the first thing that bugged me, as that meant that my favourite Olympic sport - Basketball - was nowhere to be seen. Secondly, this DVD has advertisements on it! So, we pay for the DVD and then have to sit through ads (although you are able to skip them with the chapter forward button) and I'm not just talking about the seven minute ad before the menus. If you leave the disc running after the credits there are two more ads, which are both accessible from the credits area of the DVD (though why you would want to watch them again?).

    Besides the aforementioned problems, the actual way the highlights are presented is good, with the DVD separated into days. For example, Day 1 has the women's triathlon because Michellie Jones won a silver medal and the men's 200m freestyle because Ian Thorpe won a gold medal. Again, the way the highlights have been selected (medal-only events) reared its head as none of the men's triathlon is shown. Also, the ratio of time divided for event highlights fluctuates. All of Ian Thorpe's swims have the full event shown while the women's gold medal winning water polo team only get the last ten seconds shown - the least they could have provided us with was some highlights of the match. Another example is the ratio of Cathy Freeman's 400m run (the whole event is shown) compared to Annemarie Forder's bronze medal in the 10m air pistol (her whole segment lasts about twenty seconds), which was quite a surprise as no Australian women were expected to win medals in shooting events. Do they want to get any more politically correct? I'm just getting sick of it. And to add to that the Channel 7 watermark is present for all the events on this disc.

    If you can get past the obvious shortcomings of the disc and your favourite areas of the Olympics are actually on it (!) then this may be a worthwhile purchase, but for me, it goes into the never-to-be-watched-again pile.

Video

    This disc is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. Although rumours state that some countries received the Olympics in widescreen, official word says that it was filmed completely in 1.33:1 with some countries cropping it to 1.78:1.

    For the most part being shot on PAL digital betacam, a good transfer would be expected, but that is not what we get. The sharpness level looks artificial, as if some DNR had taken place. Everything is quite edgy and seems too diffuse. Shadow detail is good but displays of it are fairly rare due to the content of the disc.

    Colour was excellent all around, being one of the stand-out points of this mediocre video transfer.

    MPEG artefacts in the form of macro-blocking (pixelization) is the main problem here - just take a look at Chapter 19 of Title 4, especially the water. Everything is broken up into blocks. A lot of the disc has this problem but the swimming events do seem to be the most problematic. This could be due to the fairly low bit-rate during this event - it hovers around the 5.5 Mb/s mark and never gets any higher than 7.2 Mb/s, even going as low as 2.4 Mb/s.

    This DVD is dual-layered, with the only mildly disruptive layer change occurring at 111:50. There is also a lengthy pause at 117:51 as the DVD skips to a new title.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one track on this DVD being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, encoded at a high bitrate of 320Kb/s.

    No problems were noted except for the awful commentary by the Channel 7 staff - at least give us a track with no commentators on it! The track itself is rather boring but nothing that isn't to be expected.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Notes - Roll Of Honour

Advertisements - Credits (3)

    The video quality is problematic but watchable.

    The audio quality is uniform and acceptable.

    Extras? What extras?

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall