Review of Stargate

Video

Stargate was an early DVD on the Region 2 market, which was distributed free with some of the Pioneer DVD players available during the middle of 1998, as well as being commercially sold. The video quality of the DVD is poor. The first time I played it, the machine would not correctly take the layer change half way through the film, and the DVD was rejected. This occurred on more than one machine (from different manufacturers). It turned out that Pioneer suffered a `bad pressing` on this DVD and when I obtained a version from a later pressing, it correctly played the film in full.

The second version was not without it`s problems however. The picture quality is not marvellous, and noticeable graininess is seen. There seems to also be some problem with the main Stargate menu, in that it continually is shown with expanded vertical resolution, as if the DVD player is not correctly resizing the image. This happens on more than one player, and a problem I cannot rectify with various adjustments to the player, the TV and LCD projector. Strange. Although still a better picture than those used to VHS would experience, in comparison with other DVDs the picture quality is noticeable poorer.

There are 18 chapters in this movie, to make navigation easy.

Audio

At the start of the film, is a superb demo of Dolby Digital. Assuming you have all your hardware on the correct settings, you will enjoy this demo. It is interesting to switch between Dolby Digital and Dolby ProLogic on the amplifier to instantly hear the difference between the two formats.

Strangely though, once the amplifier and DVD player is set on Dolby Digital sound, and you have enjoyed the amazing surround sound of the Dolby Digital demo, the film then starts to play in total silence!! The DVD seems to default to MPEG2 sound, which will reproduce total silence if your amp is set to listen to it`s digital inputs. The only way to hear anything is to re select Dolby Digital 5.1 from the remote handset once the movie has started. Strange again.

Once you get to hear the 5.1 however, it is worth it, as the various channels are used extensively throughout the film. The rear channels add a lot of excitement to the many action sequences which would be lost in stereo. The subwoofer is also active.

Features

There are some animated menus on this disc, but seemed to be shown in uncompressed expanded vertical format for me, no matter how I tweaked with the settings. There are no other extras on this disk apart from the usual chapter search.

Conclusion

This disc was rushed out the door and it shows. There have been many reports of problems with this film in Region 2 Land, which are not evident in the Region 1 user base. The bad pressing and audio problems penalise it`s scoring, but the soundtrack in itself (once you get there) is good. Hopefully Pioneer have rectified these problems in current pressings, but I cannot confirm this. It did strike home that as they needed a freebie disc to give out with their hardware, this version of Stargate was rushed, with very little in the way of quality control applied. Hopefully this mistake will not be repeated in the future.

The film itself is from the Emmerich/Devlin team (Independence Day, Godzilla) and starts well with a promising story line. However the film seems to lose its way after about half an hour, and you get a bit twitchy and keep glancing at the clock. The special effects were highly publicised when the movie came out in the cinema as the likes of which had not been seen before, but it left some people wondering if the storyline had suffered in favour of the effects.