The Dream with Roy and H.G. (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Introduction
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	423:50 (Case: 432)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Roy Slaven H.G. Nelson
Case	Brackley-Trans-Lipped
RPI	$49.95	Music	None Given

    The Dream with Roy and H.G. is a pure Aussie larrikin look at the 2000 Olympics. This is how I want to remember the Olympics.

    The Dream ran each night during the 2000 Olympics and was an instant hit around the world. It is a combination of Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson commenting on the Olympics in their own inimitable style, interviews with the athletes and a look at some of the sports with new commentary added by Roy and H.G. During the Olympics, they completely overshadowed the 'official' mascots of the Olympics with their own: the loveable and quirky Fatso the Fat-A*sed Wombat, who not only appeared on the show but started appearing during medal presentations. Eventually the Australian Olympic committee tried to have him banned, with predictable results. Aussies don't like stuffed shirts at the best of times.

    The entire seven plus hours is fantastic - you will be in hysterics through much of the show. It is also a great way to remember the Olympics. Thank God we don't take ourselves as seriously as some countries do.

    The content is broken into two sections. The first consists of highlights from the show including short extracts from the interviews, and the second is the full interviews with the athletes.

    The main features on the two discs run for 121:29 and 139:33 respectively and the interviews run for 79:33 and 78:18. Add to this the intros that run for a total of 4:48 and we have a rather large amount of material on this 2 DVD set.

    Roy and H.G. chose a very interesting mix of sports to concentrate on, and the commentaries they add are extremely irreverent and basically priceless. It is interesting to note that in some cases The Dream was the only coverage that some of these sports received, such was the fixation with certain other more popular sports. The sports covered included the men's gymnastics, and the commentary for this has to be heard to be believed. We also get a look at taekwondo, the Greco-Roman wrestling, archery, synchronised swimming (synchronised sinking), both men's and women's weightlifting, the woman's diving, the fencing (Epee), dressage, and several others.

    It is interesting to note that some of the best grist for their mill was related to sports that used to be martial arts such as fencing and taekwondo. I won't comment directly, but I don't think Roy and H.G. gave them half the pasting they deserved. Their comments on Greco-Roman wrestling sum up beautifully how far from reality these sports have moved.

    The interviews are also great, as the majority of Olympics news coverage was very dull, with questions like 'how does it feel to win gold?' being the order of the day. Roy and H.G. explore new territory, such as whether ten thousand condoms will be enough to keep the Olympic village going for the two weeks. The athletes all get into the spirit as well and come across as very nice people with good senses of humour - there are no swollen heads on this show.

    My only concern with the content is that there is an advertisement for Samsung at the start of each disc with the UOP set, so you must watch it. I don't mind ads on TV because I chose to watch the show and the ads pay for that show. On the other hand, when I purchase a DVD, I do not like paying to watch an ad - I consider this an abuse of the UOP lockout. We are also treated to the Channel 7 watermark throughout the disc.

    The 2000 Olympics were a highlight for Australia and are now part of our history. This two disc set is a very fitting tribute to both the Olympics and the Aussie spirit. Aussie, Aussie Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi !

Video

    The source for this transfer was obviously video, and even though there are some problems, playing this disc on a progressive scan player gave a preview of what digital TV promises - razor sharp images that look great even blown up to 2.5 meters.

    The camerawork by the Channel 7 crew during the Olympics is amazing. When you single step though a scene where the athlete is moving quickly, such as the tumbling run on the floor routine, you get a series of perfect stills where the athlete is stationary in the frame and the background is blurred by the camera motion. Very well done.

    The aspect ration is of course 1.33:1 and not 16x9 enhanced.

    Parts of this transfer are very sharp, with the majority having a good sharpness level. Unfortunately, they have applied edge enhancement and this shows up with halos around sharp contrast changes, plainly visible on Roy's chair on Disc 1 at 13:04 as an example. Shadow detail is a little variable with most scene being quite good, but occasionally dark suits become monochrome and lose detail. There is some very slight video noise present which has had a slight effect on the encoding but for the majority of the transfer you have to be looking very closely to see it.

    The colours are very good, with full saturation and no really noticeable noise problems other than a little chroma noise in some of the fully saturated reds.

    There are some subtle problems with the encoding. There is some subtle macro blocking such as on Roy's face on Disc 1 at 73:00 and slightly more obvious examples such as on the competitor's arm at 6:14 on Disc 2. There are also some 'jumps' in the video material. It appears as if there was a Time Base Corrector in circuit at some stage (not surprising in TV transmission) and it has lost a frame. When this happens, the TBC holds the previous frame until it receives the next good frame and then continues This causes a very slight pause in any motion on screen followed by a jump to the new position. This occurs several times on both disc, a clear example being when Roy leans back at 72:55 on Disc 1.

    There are no subtitles on either disc.

    I suspect that the main features and the interviews are on different layers as I could no see a layer change on either disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio has two problems. The first is that the volume varies a little in general, causing you to ride the remote to understand the dialogue at times. Although this is caused by a faulty microphone at one stage, it is still present at other times. The second problem is some rather nasty clicks and pops.

    Starting at 72:00 during the interviews on Disc 1, there are a series of clicks in the soundtrack. If you were listening at reference volume level, these could be close to being a problem for your tweeters. They continue for the rest of the interview section of the disc. There are also a couple of clicks on the second disc, but not nearly the number that are on the first disc.

    The dialogue had a couple of problems; the aforementioned volume problems, a dead microphone at one point and a couple of instances of bad diction, although the majority was clear - remember this is for over seven hours of material.

    There were no problems with the audio sync.

    The music comes from a competition that was run during the show and matches the feel well. It is only really used during the intros and such. We also have a visit at the end from 'The Voice'.

    Other than one occurrence during the swimming where the crowd suddenly appeared in the surrounds, there was basically no surround activity. The same applies to the subwoofer - no real activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is presented in 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. We are treated to an animation of Fatso performing his famous personal comment before moving on to a static menu with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound.

Introduction

    Running for 1:53 on the first disc and 1:34 on the second, we are treated to Roy and H.G.'s introduction to the DVD on the first DVD and in the second, the reason why we should burn our VHS copy of The Dream and buy the DVD.

    Despite the problems with the video and audio it is hard not to get caught back up in 'Olympic Fever' when watching this disc. Hopefully someone, somewhere will put a copy of this disc into a time capsule. I would love to be there in a thousand years to watch our descendants reaction to it. I would be perfectly happy as an Australian to be judged by the content.

    The video is let down by some minor video noise and edge enhancement.

    Watch out for those clicks on the audio track.

    Any 'extras' would simply be more content so it is unfair to judge on that criteria.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall