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Nature's Colors (HD DVD)
Concert Hot Spot // Unrated // February 27, 2007 // Region 0
List Price: $34.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
You might think that a company called Concert Hot Spot would specialize in...well, concerts, but only two of the upstart label's five releases feature live musical performances. The remainder of their catalog is anchored around classical music playing over themed high-definition imagery: A View from Space with Heavenly Music paired an extensive array of compositions with footage recorded from the Endeavour space shuttle, the awkwardly but aptly titled A Stained Glass Christmas with Heavenly Carols followed in time for the holidays, and their latest release is Nature's Colors with the World's Greatest Music.
The song hasn't changed. Nature's Colors is a collection of high-definition nature footage shot around the world, set to the following classical pieces:
Essentially a nature-themed screensaver with orchestral backing, Nature's Colors is a series of a few seconds' worth of mostly static footage following one after 
another, free of narration or any sort of story being told. I suppose it's meant to be left playing in the background rather than actively watched; as lovely as much of this imagery is, it's not easy to trudge through its 78 minute runtime in one sitting. It's also disappointing that so many overly familiar classical pieces were chosen to accompany the visuals. Yes, they're timeless compositions that have endured for centuries, but even people who make a concerted effort to avoid classical music could probably hum every note of the allegro from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik once they realized what it was, and the same goes for all but a couple of the pieces on this disc.
Pick the right time on Discovery HD Theater -- particularly when a program like Sunrise Earth is on -- and you could replicate the experience of Nature's Colors with a press of the mute button and a $3 public domain CD of classical music. I'd imagine that someone is buying these discs since Concert Hot Spot keeps issuing them, but especially with a bloated sticker price of $34.98, I wouldn't recommend buying Nature's Colors sight-unseen.
Video: The footage featured throughout Nature's Colors was culled from HDenvironments' archives as well as material previously shot by Concert Hot Spot; I seem to remember seeing some of the sealife recycled from their Guitarscape disc. The 1.78:1 MPEG-2-encoded image is a noticeable step-up from the DVD side of this combo disc, but it doesn't approach an average nature program on channels like Discovery HD Theater or HDNet, let alone the best of what HD DVD has to offer. That's not to fault the material itself -- Nature's Colors features some gorgeous locations photographed by someone who clearly has a strong visual eye, and its vivid hues certainly warrant the disc's title -- but the compression work is lackluster. The program is at its best in tight close-ups, but from any sort of distance, fine object detail nearly disappears. I've been spoiled by so many HD DVDs where panoramic shots seem to reveal each individual blade of grass and distinctly render each and every leaf on a tree; in Nature's Colors, they all smear together. Light artifacting is noticeable even in some static shots, particularly in areas with shades of red or a deep blue, but the image gets rather noisy and unstable during fades and nearly any sort of motion. The DVD side of this combo disc suffers from some of these same problems, so presumably either the source material is at fault, or whoever's doing the authoring work isn't that adept with MPEG-2 in general. A few shots are either horribly out of focus or aren't in high-definition
at all, although that's not at all a persistent problem. If the image had been more crisply defined or richly detailed, I'd be more enthusiastic about recommending this disc.
Audio: Nature's Colors boasts audio in the traditional Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 as well as lossless TrueHD, and switching back and forth between them, the levels on the two tracks sound very different. Tape hiss was occasionally much more pronounced on the lossy Dolby Digital Plus mix, which was also louder and more forceful compared to the meeker TrueHD track. For all I know, fiddling with the volume could have evened things out, but I wasn't left with the impression that the lossless audio had much of an edge, if any, over the Dolby Digital Plus track. The presentation of the public domain performances is unremarkable but fine, not boasting much of a low-end or an overwhelmingly strong sense of clarity.
Extras: None, aside from the ability to flip over the single-layer HD DVD and give it a spin in any traditional DVD player.
Random Gripe: The packaging has several spelling and grammatical errors, mistakingly using "it's" instead of "its", misspelling "Nachtmusik", and botching Pachelbel's name as well as adding an extra 'n' to his "Canon in D". Typos at some point in the process are inevitable, but they shouldn't creep into a nationally distributed product like this.
Conclusion: I'm really not sure who the target audience for a disc like this is. The nature photography is beautiful, yes, but its somewhat noisy appearance and a lack of fine detail don't leave it well-suited as demo material on HD DVD, and the selection of classical music isn't particularly imaginative. I really am glad that a studio as small and plucky as Concert Hot Spot supports these next-generation formats so enthusiastically, but I'd rather see them live up to their name and do it with concerts instead of these glorified screensavers. Skip It.
The song hasn't changed. Nature's Colors is a collection of high-definition nature footage shot around the world, set to the following classical pieces:
|
|
another, free of narration or any sort of story being told. I suppose it's meant to be left playing in the background rather than actively watched; as lovely as much of this imagery is, it's not easy to trudge through its 78 minute runtime in one sitting. It's also disappointing that so many overly familiar classical pieces were chosen to accompany the visuals. Yes, they're timeless compositions that have endured for centuries, but even people who make a concerted effort to avoid classical music could probably hum every note of the allegro from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik once they realized what it was, and the same goes for all but a couple of the pieces on this disc. Pick the right time on Discovery HD Theater -- particularly when a program like Sunrise Earth is on -- and you could replicate the experience of Nature's Colors with a press of the mute button and a $3 public domain CD of classical music. I'd imagine that someone is buying these discs since Concert Hot Spot keeps issuing them, but especially with a bloated sticker price of $34.98, I wouldn't recommend buying Nature's Colors sight-unseen.
Video: The footage featured throughout Nature's Colors was culled from HDenvironments' archives as well as material previously shot by Concert Hot Spot; I seem to remember seeing some of the sealife recycled from their Guitarscape disc. The 1.78:1 MPEG-2-encoded image is a noticeable step-up from the DVD side of this combo disc, but it doesn't approach an average nature program on channels like Discovery HD Theater or HDNet, let alone the best of what HD DVD has to offer. That's not to fault the material itself -- Nature's Colors features some gorgeous locations photographed by someone who clearly has a strong visual eye, and its vivid hues certainly warrant the disc's title -- but the compression work is lackluster. The program is at its best in tight close-ups, but from any sort of distance, fine object detail nearly disappears. I've been spoiled by so many HD DVDs where panoramic shots seem to reveal each individual blade of grass and distinctly render each and every leaf on a tree; in Nature's Colors, they all smear together. Light artifacting is noticeable even in some static shots, particularly in areas with shades of red or a deep blue, but the image gets rather noisy and unstable during fades and nearly any sort of motion. The DVD side of this combo disc suffers from some of these same problems, so presumably either the source material is at fault, or whoever's doing the authoring work isn't that adept with MPEG-2 in general. A few shots are either horribly out of focus or aren't in high-definition
at all, although that's not at all a persistent problem. If the image had been more crisply defined or richly detailed, I'd be more enthusiastic about recommending this disc. Audio: Nature's Colors boasts audio in the traditional Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 as well as lossless TrueHD, and switching back and forth between them, the levels on the two tracks sound very different. Tape hiss was occasionally much more pronounced on the lossy Dolby Digital Plus mix, which was also louder and more forceful compared to the meeker TrueHD track. For all I know, fiddling with the volume could have evened things out, but I wasn't left with the impression that the lossless audio had much of an edge, if any, over the Dolby Digital Plus track. The presentation of the public domain performances is unremarkable but fine, not boasting much of a low-end or an overwhelmingly strong sense of clarity.
Extras: None, aside from the ability to flip over the single-layer HD DVD and give it a spin in any traditional DVD player.
Random Gripe: The packaging has several spelling and grammatical errors, mistakingly using "it's" instead of "its", misspelling "Nachtmusik", and botching Pachelbel's name as well as adding an extra 'n' to his "Canon in D". Typos at some point in the process are inevitable, but they shouldn't creep into a nationally distributed product like this.
Conclusion: I'm really not sure who the target audience for a disc like this is. The nature photography is beautiful, yes, but its somewhat noisy appearance and a lack of fine detail don't leave it well-suited as demo material on HD DVD, and the selection of classical music isn't particularly imaginative. I really am glad that a studio as small and plucky as Concert Hot Spot supports these next-generation formats so enthusiastically, but I'd rather see them live up to their name and do it with concerts instead of these glorified screensavers. Skip It.
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