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CNN Millennium 2000

CNN Millennium 2000

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horrendous picture quality
Review: This could have been good, if attention had been paid to the transfer to DVD format. The fireworks look more like indistinguishable blobs of light even on a TV... on a progressive scan computer monitor or hi-res TV, forget it. Don't waste your money if you want to see sharp, clear fireworks & images... clearly this presentation was thrown together with no thought at all. Maybe you taped something off cable on new years eve, 2000... if so, what you have almost certainly looks better than this, so see if you can get it digitized.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horrendous picture quality
Review: This could have been good, if attention had been paid to the transfer to DVD format. The fireworks look more like indistinguishable blobs of light even on a TV... on a progressive scan computer monitor or hi-res TV, forget it. Don't waste your money if you want to see sharp, clear fireworks & images... clearly this presentation was thrown together with no thought at all. Maybe you taped something off cable on new years eve, 2000... if so, what you have almost certainly looks better than this, so see if you can get it digitized.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: How Depressing!
Review: This disc should have been a wonderful record of the world's celebrations as I remembered watching on TV. Instead I have a God-awful piece of trash that looks like it was edited on New Year's Day by someone still hungover. Never has so much wonderful source material been mangled, butchered, and just plain disrespected! This disc should have been done with at least some eye to future generations. A real downer. Avoid at all costs!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Celebration or serious report?
Review: This DVD - is a waste of money. I ask you: What does the title say? Millennium 2000. And what does it have? Those "proudly advertised" 60 reporters at all time zones yelling from their bellies with their artistically worded reports. Most of them are excited themselves and what we have in this presentation is only their excited reports. CNN, we saw this yelling for 100 hours in your TV during the dawn of 2000. We don't want those yelling again. We want to see THOSE CELEBRATIONS. And the DVD suddenly skips to the next time zone without any warning. For example, it started with New Delhi and after 10 seconds, it moved to the next time zone suddenly. Is this because of the CNN monopoly on 2000 celebration coverage? Could be. I thought I had the whole world's moments of entering the new millennium in my digital disk. But ultimately, what I got is a waste of 20 bucks and nothing more than that! To get another version of those moments, I have to wait for another 1000 years. Ah, what is there, let me wait!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Rush job - badly researched and executed
Review: This DVD could have been a lot better. For a start, the picture quality is terrible, like it's been taped straight off the TV.

The programme has been badly researched - take for example Jean Michel Jarre's concert at the Great Pyramids of Egypt. It's described as 'Gene Michael Jarrey's' concert and they read comments from an earlier press release.

As for the camera work, let's take the pyramids again: it's dark, grainy and you can't even see what's going on the stage let alone the lights on the pyramids. Instead of paying to tap into Mike Mansfield's video feed they obviously decided that a VHS camcorder 2 miles away would suffice!

Avoid. Get the book "A moment in Time" instead if you want to remember that night!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A mixed bag in more than one respect
Review: This DVD covers "midnight around the world" on the eve of the year 2000, starting at Chatham Islands and ending as the new day dawns across the globe. Along the way we are treated to varying degrees of Korea, Moscow, Baghdad, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Madagascar, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Cairo, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Athens, France, Italy, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Nigeria, England, Scotland, Iceland, Ireland, Rio de Janiero, Sau Paulo, Toronto, Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Havana, Winnipeg, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Granbury, New Orleans, Mexico City, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and a brief wrapup. At least, those are the places listed at the beginning of each chapter, but I didn't see any actual coverage of Sau Paulo (either spelled correctly or not), for example, so there might not be a great deal of accuracy in their listings.

It's terrific as a souvenir, and a piece of history, and a travelogue. One moment in time, to have and watch for many years in the future and remember it whether you really cared about the turning over from 1900s to 2000s or not. In that respect, it's special. There's no denying that. So it pretty much makes the technical side of things immaterial, doesn't it?

Well, if it does, don't hesitate to buy it. You'll get what you want...gorgeous views of the world celebrating like its never celebrated before, and a sense of being there, everywhere, as it happened, from the glitzy shows in Paris and London to the more earthy shows (more human, perhaps?) in the Pacific islands.

But if the technical side DOES matter, there are things about this disc that will affect your appreciation. Probably not a lot, mind you, but enough to tell you why... to begin with, the compression seems a bit on the rough side. I don't know the real reason, but maybe they rushed this one out a little too quickly. There are a few bits of footage that are clearly digital video transmissions, and of course I forgive those, but overall I noticed a lot more - dare I say it - artifacting on this disc than most others I've seen. Keep in mind, though, that noticing that sort of thing is a bit of a personal thing - some people notice it while others don't. So maybe I'm seeing things, it's up to you to printed well in advance of the disc's contents) tells us that the approximate running time is 120 minutes. Two hours. Warner is being mighty generous with the word "approximate" because the actual disc running time is 84 minutes. One hour, twenty-four minutes. As if they couldn't find enough footage to get a little closer to the 120 minute mark... hmph.

The best advantage of the DVD version over the videotape is the ability to quickly access the celebrations (such as they are) in each time zone by use of the chapter selections. For example, they give you instant access to the Eiffel Tower or the Great Pyramids. Appreciate it, because it's the disc's only menu (apart from the main menu which offers you PLAY or the chapter list).

You make the call. A decent price, and perhaps a time capsule of incalculable worth... but how much will you let disappointment dim your pleasure? END

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: How not to make a DVD
Review: This DVD is an example of how one should NOT be done. The video quality is on the level of VHS, or even worse, something taped straight off the air with a bad antenna. The menu is very simplistic and the whole disc seems to have been rushed out in order to cash in on the millenium memorabilla craze. I would have expected better from CNN, being the "world news leader". The footage could have been remastered and cleaned up and more time could have been spent polishing it. Buy this disk if you absolutely have to own a record of the Y2K New Year's celebrations.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Is it what it is...
Review: This is basically a timezone-by-timezone view of the Millenium celebrations at major cities around the world, as shown on CNN that day. At each countdown the major cities are shown together so you can see how each one celebrated at the same time. Video quality about the same as broadcast TV. Audio quality not great. No extra stuff. But you knew it would be this way. Consider it a souvenier and move on.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Quality does not match Content
Review: This is not as good as I expected! A lot of celebration has been cut off. And there are a lot of degradation in screen quality! I remember when I watch the celebration live on CNN thru my cable, the live cast is sharper than what is shown on the DVD! (I thought DVD is better quality!)

It is a good DVD to keep and has a good content, but the quality is a bit low.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It was Okay.
Review: This is the only video currently on the market on Millennium celebrations. Whether you like it or not. But if you want to own a video of Millennium celebrations then this has to do. The picture quality wasn't it's best. The whole video ran only 90 minutes even though the tape box said the running time was 120 minutes. There were a lot of split screens whenever CNN had to cover more than one city at once. Some cities were missing like the fireworks coming out of the Seattle space needle. Not all 24 time zones were included. Only about 17 time zones. We go from London, England at 7 PM EST right to Rio at 11 PM EST. The celebrations in the time zones during the hours of 8, 9, 10 PM and 4 AM EST were cut out. Lot of Sydney's fireworks display was included. It was the longest segement on the video. There was only 45 seconds of footage of the ball dropping in Times Square. But they showed a lot of the confetti and pyrotechnics that followed afterward. It shared a screen with Washington D.C. So this video is in the middle. Not too great but not too lousy either. I give it just an OK rating. I hope a video comes out on Times Square compiling all the 24 hourly celebrations. That would make a good item. They could also include some behind the scene footage on the puppets and the special effects.


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