Come on Over to Barney's House (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio Read Along Featurette-Barney's Dino Dancin' Tunes Trailer-6 Audio-Only Track-4 Scene Selection Anim & Audio Biographies-Character Notes-What We Learned Today Biographies-Cast DVD-ROM Extras-Games, Weblink
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	50:27
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jeff Gittle
Studio Distributor	Lyrick Studios Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Stephen White
Case	C-Button-Version 2
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

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	No

    Somehow, I've managed to get allocated a Barney DVD to review. I must admit that this disc has been sitting at the bottom of my review pile for quite some time. Just when I had almost summoned up the strength to start the review, a new and more desirable title would arrive, saving me the trouble. Alas, I had a busy weekend of reviewing recently and didn't have any discs left to review, so Barney finally got a run. Surely it couldn't be as bad as all my fellow reviewers have constantly reminded me.

    Barney needs little introduction to those that know of him. Come On Over To Barney's House is one of several Barney DVDs to be released, so most of you that have purchased these for the kiddies will already know that Barney is a rather large purple dinosaur and is ably supported by dinosaur friends BJ and Baby Bop. Together with a couple of suitably overacting kids and several other visitors that drop by, the gang sing and dance. They also attempt to provide some form of educational entertainment for the little ones (singing about sneezing and using tissues in one song!). It does get pretty sickly at times, although this disc is chock full of features and is pretty good value if your kids are fond of the silly six foot purple dinosaur. One problem is the use of American colloquialisms throughout that often do not give the right message to Australian youngsters (pail - bucket, etc).

    There are fifteen different songs presented in the main feature plus a host of other special features providing several hours worth of entertainment.

Video

    Despite cringing at much of the content, much like the majority of previously reviewed Barney titles this is a pretty fine video transfer.

    It  is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is very sharp and quite finely detailed. Shadow detail is limited simply by the fact that no scenes are poorly lit and hence there is no opportunity for this transfer to exhibit poor shadow detail. There is no low level noise present.

    As in most children's shows, the colours were rendered very nicely, with vibrant primary colours everywhere. Plenty of purples, yellows, reds, and blues in many different shades. There is no colour bleed whatsoever to interfere with the colours on offer.

    No MPEG artefacts, film-to-video artefacts or video artefacts were seen.

    There is only one set of subtitles available. These are English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles and are in an extra large font for the little ones to read easily. I noticed no problems with them.

    This is an dual layered disc but I was unable to detect a layer change. Presumably the main feature is on one layer and the additional material is on the other.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only the one audio track present on this DVD, this being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 effort with surround encoding.

    Dialogue is always clear and intelligible even though the American accents become a bit much at times. Audio sync isn't an issue with the dinosaurs obviously and I noticed no problems with the child actors' dialogue either.

    The music is fairly light and repetitive and does become a bit annoying after a while.

    There was no surround channel use and the subwoofer received only very minor use to support the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Main Menu Introduction

    Video of Barney welcoming everyone to his house and promising how much fun we are all going to have. Presented full frame 1.33:1 with a standard Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Main Menu Audio

    The Barney theme playing endlessly.

Read Along

    The Count To Ten read along book. You are able to read with Barney or read by yourself. The read with Barney option features a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack and runs for 5:35. Presented full frame 1.33:1 it is obviously not 16x9 enhanced. Quite a reasonable educational tool for reinforcing counting to the little ones.

Featurette - Bonus Video

    Features Barney's Dino Dancin' Tunes. Running for 32:57 minutes and presented full frame 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Barney gets a magic jukebox delivered that allows BJ and himself to insert a disc and play a number of songs from previous Barney releases.

Trailer

    Previews of six Barney titles. All presented full frame 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks. Featured are previews for Big Surprise (56 seconds), Sing and Dance with Barney (1:06 minutes), Let's Play School (1:07 minutes), Barney Songs (1:45 minutes), Barney in Outer Space (57 seconds), and Around the World With Barney (1:02 minutes).

Audio Only Track

    Allows you to play an audio-only track of four of the Barney songs. Featured are Rock-n-Roll Star (2:48 minutes), I Put A Smile On (1:23 minutes), By Myself (1:32 minutes), and I Just Can't Wait (1:32 minutes). Audio is by way of a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Featurette - Sing Along

    Selecting this option takes you to an animated sub menu. From this sub-menu you can select either individually or all the eleven songs that make up the Come On Over To Barney's House video for instant playback (ie. you can watch the Barney video without the annoying banter present between the songs - quite a nice idea if you want to shorten the experience). Total running time is 17:55 minutes. Presented the same as the main feature in terms of video and audio.

Scene Selection Animation & Audio

    Sort of tucked away where you almost don't know it's there. The scene selection is navigated to by selecting the special features menu. Small windows showing the start of each scene are available for selection.

Biographies-Character

    Details of the dinosaurs that take part in the Barney show.

Notes

    Notes from the educators responsible for the content. Here they stress that Barney is more than just entertainment for the kiddies. They also learn all sorts of human and social interaction skills such as good manners and personal hygiene!

Biographies-Cast

    Four brief biographies of the children that take part in the show.

DVD-ROM Extras

    When this disc is placed in a DVD-ROM drive, a nice menu pops up that allows you to view the same video menu that you get with a conventional DVD player and a couple of other buttons. There is the usual weblink through to the official Barney.com website, and also several very simple but effective and well written games for the kiddies to play. Included here are the usual games such as Connect The Dots, Collect the Fruit, Memory Game, and the Baking Game.

    The Region 1 title is to exactly the same specification as the Region 4.

    After recently reviewing another children's title in the form of the hugely popular The Wiggles, I have to confess that Barney cannot compare - especially for Australian youngsters. If you don't have any children's DVDs yet and the kids are pestering to get one, I would lean heavily in favour of The Wiggles, purely for the presence of local content. Some of the American colloquialisms will give the kids the wrong message and that is not a good thing.

    Having expressed my concerns over the content, the quality of the video is excellent and will surely please. The audio is serviceable and does the job.

    The extras are also pretty good and there are certainly enough of them to keep everyone happy for a few hours.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall