Customer Reviews

Home Theater Demo Featuring Mannheim Steamroller

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It plays more like a "Coming Attractions" trailer for American Gramaphone's video offerings. There's some interesting stuff here, like the "Visualizer", an on-screen real-time, six channel spectral analysis of the program audio, or the fact that this disk has both Dolby Digital _and_ DTS audio tracks. (It clued me that the default settings for my DVD player disabled DTS, and [eventually] allowed me to hear the difference between these competing formats.)

Now for the bad news.

Navigation is a mess, some features don't work as advertised, and other things that I'd expect are strangely missing from this presentation. Examples include:

- Some menu selections don't appear to do anything

- Unusually difficult to see what current selection is

- Cursoring past one of the icons launches a special effect sequence without pressing Enter/Select. This disaster is repeated on several screens.

- I stumbled across a Photo Gallery behind the one of the musical selections, but have been unable to return there, only the "Visualizer" display is available. The standard for the medium would be a selection made on the Features Screen and/or the "Angle" alternative video selection on most DVD players, but it doesn't work that way here.

- Audio level on DTS tracks appear about 4-6 dB lower than corresponding Dolby Digital level, making A-B comparisons difficult.

- On-disc documentation indicates that one side is DVD-Video and the other is DVD-Audio, though disk has but one recorded side.

- Visualizer shows LFE channel information is centered at 20 Hz with nothing above about 40Hz, which seems unlikely

For a true demo product, I'd expect some other calibration/setup aids on the disk such as test tones, color bars and reference sheets, and items that may illustrate the capabilities of the DVD player itself (alternate Video/angle/aspect ratios, additional audio material or languages, subtitles) would be nice. It shouldn't involve an Easter Egg hunt to find the material that is present.

In summary, I feel like I paid for a product to demonstrate the capabilities of my system, but got a flawed "test of concept" that is little more than an advertisement for American Gramaphone's revamped catalog. There's also an "ain't we something!" attitude that became annoying as frustration set in over getting even the simple stuff to work right. It's the first AG product that I regret purchasing.

This DVD is not your ordinary Home Theater beep, whistle and ethereal space sounds designed to test your speakers. You can have some fun with this fair in showing off your home theater system, especially, if you enjoy the seasonal sights and sounds of Mannheim Steamroller who perform MOONLIGHT AT COVE CASTLE, MOZART QUARTET IN C MAJOR - MENUETTO WATERFALL, NIGHT PARTY and GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN. This DVD-Video demo includes Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1. American Gramaphone's Home Theater Demo DVD is a must for anyone who has a home theater system: I completely enjoyed the diagnostics, music and visuals. The music of Mannheim Steamroller will push the capabilities of your home theater system to the max.

I thought I liked Mannheim until they sent me this garbage. Does demo mean "destroy" after you hear the whole "dvd" in about 10 minutes? I thought there would be some music on there but there is really only 2 songs and some ancient footage with mediocre acting-- The only cool things are the asteroid comet thing which is already on other mannheim dvd's. RIPOFF!!! They shouldve sent this out free with their other dvd's.

I should have been warned by the title Home Theathor Demo, for that what it was just Demo, a selection of various images, one just some jumping lines in time to the music. It was a disappointment. It should have been free or a token fee like $2.99. It was not worth the $17.99 I paid for it.I am going to return it for a refund.

home theatre video featuring Mannheim Steamroller...won't play on ordinary equipment. The seller explained to me after my complaint, that it was recorded on German equipment and won't play on American equipment. No wonder it was so cheap...everything else I ordered worked fine. But this one is useless. Don't buy it.

Such a royal piece of junk. This DVD is not worth my time or money. As soon as christmas is over, it is going back to the store.