Destiny's Child-The Platinum's on the Wall

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Animation Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	24:40
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Troy Smith Joseph Kahn Darren Grant
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	Beyoncé Knowles Kelendria Rowland Michelle Williams
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$24.95	Music	Destiny's Child

    Destiny's Child-The Platinum's On The Wall is a collection of six music video clips, being the 'Number One' hits from this group, along with one song recorded at a concert.

    I have only head this group as part of movie soundtracks such as "Men In Black," "Romeo Must Die," and "Life" , so I will quote Sony's web site for a description: "Hailing from Houston, Texas, Destiny's Child is one of the best-selling female groups in the world. Destiny's Child has sold more than 15 million albums and singles worldwide". As far as you can classify any music these days, they seem to fit into the R&B/soul/rap category.

    Other than the bonus track, I was surprised to find that this disc does not contain any 'live' performances, but simply the music video clip that would have been released along with each song, such as you would see on MTV. There are only six songs on this disk plus the bonus track, along with a complete lack of any real extras, giving a total running time of 24 minutes, a somewhat sparse offering.

Video

    This disc is a bit of a mix as far as both aspect ratios and anamorphic enhancement is concerned.

    The first four clips are in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The fifth is side-matted (mail-slotted) to approximately 1.00:1. The sixth is in a letterboxed aspect ratio of 1.85:1. None of these are 16x9 enhanced. The bonus track is in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. It appears that the six main tracks are the same as can be found on the American DVD release and the bonus track was added for the Australian release.

    I will deal with the first six clips first. They are very poorly transferred. The image is very soft and has many and varied artefacts. The clips were probably shot on NTSC video, then up-converted to PAL and MPEG compressed. The quality has really suffered through this process. The video has probably been back and forth from analogue, to digital, and back again so many times that it does not know if it is AC or DC!

    The transfer is extremely soft throughout. Objects, especially people in the background, are very blurred. An example of this can be seen in the faces in the long shot at 7:30 which are nothing more than indistinct blurs. The shadow detail is also poor, particularly noticeable when the girls are in black clothing. Even worse is the white level. The images are very overexposed, with many parts of the screen completely saturated with no detail at all. Faces become monochromatic, and background details completely blow out (eg 13:24).

    Colour varies from quite good through to terrible. At times, the colour is rich and saturated and at other times it is very washed out. The source for this transfer was obviously composite, as at times there is some very bad cross coloration. Examples of this are in nearly every shot, with extreme occurrences at 12:01 in the background, in the girls' costumes at 10:32 and on the coffee table at 16:42. This last one literally strobes from black to white every second frame.

    The transfer also exhibits significant interlacing artefacts, with every second frame a noticeable mixture of two frames. The artefact list unfortunately continues with aliasing visible in many places, such as the wall edge at 18:00.

    There is also evidence of over-compression of the image with macro-blocking visible, again in many spots, with a clear example in the background of the shot at 1:39.

    The bonus track has much better black and white levels and colour saturation in comparison to the first six, but still suffers from aliasing and some very clear examples of macro-blocking such as the girl's face at 1:03. Considering this was shot outside at a concert as opposed to in the studio, this shows up again how poorly the first six clips are presented.

    There are no subtitles on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio tracks on this disc. The PCM is quite good but the Dolby Digital 5.1 has some problems.

    The first audio track is a Linear PCM 48kHz/16 bit 2.0 channel mix. This is clear throughout with reasonable dynamics. The voices are clear and the treble is clear and sharp. The bass is slightly lacking, but lays a reasonable foundation for the music. Overall, this track sounded just a little anaemic.

    The second track is a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. There are two problems with this track. The first is that vocals are mixed several dB lower than in the PCM track. This leaves the vocals somewhat buried beneath the backing music. The LFE track has more presence in this track, but it is muddy and distracts from the music rather than adding anything. The surrounds have a portion of the backing track directed to them and while they expanded the soundstage somewhat, they added little overall.

    The Bonus track does not have a Dolby Digital mix but has two copies of the Linear PCM track.

    There did not appear to be any audio sync problems with this disc.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Biography

     The only extra on this disc is a simple text-based biography, listing information about each song, such as the number of singles sold etc. There are ten pages of this.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

• Bonus Track: Independent Women Part 1 (Live At The Brits 2001)

    The Region 1 version of this disk misses out on the bonus track. Seeing as this is the track used in the movie Charlie's Angels, it is a shame they did not get this. On the other hand, they may have received a better transfer than we have.

    Because of the problems noted with the transfer, I have difficulty in recommending the R4 version.

    This DVD does not do justice to the talent and popularity of Destiny's Child. As the DVD only contains seven songs for a total running time of only 24 minutes and has a very ordinary transfer to boot, I would recommend caution if considering it. You may well be better off with a CD and a wall poster. 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall