BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Music	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	87:04 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Chris Hilson Tommy Cunningham
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Graeme Clark Tommy Cunningham Neil Mitchell Marti Pellow Graeme Duffin Paul Spong Neil Sidwell Jamie Talbot
Case	Amaray
RRP	$39.95	Music	Wet Wet Wet

    Wet Wet Wet are clearly a middle-of-the-road band. Their overall sound is quite pleasant without being overly remarkable. It's the sort of music that would appeal to a wide range of people, as it is tuneful and very easy to listen to. You won't hear any passionate soul-searching ballads here, with the slowest and most emotional piece being the relatively sterile Julia Says. On the other hand, you won't hear any raucous noise either, with the most outrageous piece of music being the relatively tame East Of The River.

    Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed this DVD. However, I don't think that the average person could take much more than 90 minutes worth of Wet Wet Wet in any one sitting as their music does tend to sound somewhat alike after a while.

    The complete track listing is as follows; Sweet Little Mystery, Wishing I Was Lucky, Strange, Lonely Girl, Temptation, Sweet Surrender, Goodnight Girl, Lip Service, I Can Give You Everything, Julia Says, Somewhere Somehow, Don't Want To Forgive Me Now, If Only I Could Be With You, East Of The River, If I Never See You Again, Beyond The Sea, Maybe I'm In Love, Love Is All Around. It is worth mentioning that Love Is All Around is a particularly lacklustre version of this song.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is generally remarkably sharp, with a surprising amount of detail visible in the majority of shots. One particular camera was an exception to this, with long shots of the stage from the left looking considerably less defined than all other shots. A factor in the overall amount of detail visible is the generally quite high level of lighting for a concert. Most of this concert is well-lit with white light, unlike the more usual monochromatic colours of other live shows. Flare from the camera looking directly at lighting is a minor problem at times.

    Shadow detail, as is typical for this type of source material, is lacking, but there is no low level noise marring any of the blackness.

    The colours were variably presented. Generally, they were very true-to-life with the frequently white stage lighting, though some of the close-up flesh tones were a little oversaturated. The few portions of this show which were lit with a single colour were presented remarkably well, with little to no chroma noise apparent in the signal at these times and a remarkable amount of detail still present in the image.

    There were very very few MPEG artefacts noted in this transfer, a remarkable achievement given the copious amounts of stage smoke being blown about during the transfer and the frequency of flashing lights and laser light effects. Some of the shots involving the audience could be seen testing the MPEG compression to its limits and just breaking out into the slightest macro-blocking, but casual inspection did not reveal this - you had to freeze-frame these images to notice these artefacts.

    Aliasing was minor and affected only some of the close-up shots of guitar strings, a spotted shirt worn by one of the band members and close-ups involving the on-stage DLP images. The DLP images also occasionally displayed moire effects.

    A number of flashes were seen in the transfer which looked like video artefacts. However, on closer inspection, all but one turned out to be lighting effects. The one true video artefact in this transfer occurs at 38:08 where a momentary tracking error appears to intrude onto a single frame.

    The running time of this DVD is incorrectly given on the packaging as 90 minutes. It is, in fact, 87:04 in length.

Audio

    The vocals are mixed into predominantly the center channel, and they are not mixed loudly enough. They are all but inaudible at times over the rest of the mix. This is a real shame, as otherwise this mix is excellent. This aspect of the transfer appeared to improve towards the end of the transfer, but the fact remains that the vocals were simply not loud enough at the best of times. When additional vocalists join in to provide harmonies, the vocal level becomes borderline acceptable, with the harmonists being mixed into the left and right speakers. Dialogue was incomprehensible, but this was as a result of the thick Scottish accent of the lead singer.

    There were no audio sync problems with this DVD at all.

    The surround channels were used to lightly support the music and to carry some crowd ambience, but this is predominantly a front hemispheric sound mix.

    The .1 channel was nicely utilized to support the music, never calling undue attention to itself and generally providing a nice bottom octave to the overall sound.

Menu

    The video quality is remarkably good given the type of source material involved.

    The audio quality is disappointing in that the vocals are very difficult to make out most of the time.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
24th March 2000