[TheBang]

So, I mentioned earlier that there were problems with the DVD. The technical issues really ruin this release for me. Somehow there seems to have been absolutely no QA before the DVD went out the door.

1. Boy, Boy, Boy's audio channels are skewed for the first 45 seconds or so. It begins almost completely in the left channel and gradually moves to the center. This is not how it's supposed to be because if you watch the stream on uwlive.com or various other sources for the video, it doesn't do this. I can't even fathom how this problem happened in the first place or how it got past a simple headphone check.

2. The fancy graphical Ring Road video (Graham Wood's) is composed for 16:9, but it's presented on the disc as 4:3 letterbox instead of anamorphically enhanced. All the other widescreen videos on the disc are anamorphically enhanced. A shame.

3. Beautiful Burnout at the Oblivion Ball is perhaps the most disappointing. The audio track during the whole video is out of sync by about a half second. This is most apparent when Karl is singing lyrics and the camera is focused on a close-up of him. It is a bit apparent at other times too with light synchronization and Karl's dance movements. Also:

4. The aspect ratio on BB is all messed up! WTF! It's essentially been authored for a 16:10 display, which is not a valid flag in DVD Video. It's displayed at 16:9, of course, so everything looks vertically squished. Bad aspect ratios are a major pet peeve of mine, so between that and the audio sync issue, this video was hugely aggravating.

5. Of minor note is the fact that they edited out the video footage of all 3 botched lyrical entrances by Karl and the lighting crew. That was the reason for all the smiling between R+K and Rick's frantic hand waving at the beginning of the video. You can still kind of hear it in the audio track, but it's been mixed down like it was in the CD release. I can understand why they edited it out, but from a personal standpoint, I would have liked to have seen it.