Customer Reviews

NASA - 25 Years of Glory Volumes 1-5

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

 

 

Okay, first the bad: This DVD set is a repackaging of some VERY old NASA documentaries. The features are about 30 mins long each and narrated in a very simple way. I suspect that these films were made for elementary or junior high school level audiences, and originally shown in classrooms on a reel-to-reel movie projector. The video transfer is quite poor, and the sound is very flat. The "extras" do not add significantly to the overall package.

The good: Despite all of the aforementioned shortcomings, the set is worth buying for the simple fact that there is a tremendous amount of otherwise hard-to-find footage of the space program from Mercury through the Space Shuttle, with a special emphasis on lunar EVA footage, contained in this set. Each 30 min segment focuses on a particular mission, usually showing the entire launch, some in flight operations, and the recovery. Plus, there is a huge volume of footage shot in mission control, where eagle-eyed viewers can often see other well-known astronauts working the Capcom console.

I bought it, I watched it, and I liked it. Just be realistic about what it is.

First, the good news: there is a ton of great old NASA footage in this set, including historic launches from every phase of the manned space program, lots of "firsts", and quite a lot of footage that is difficult to find elsewhere. If you're a space freak, you need these DVDs.

The bad news: video transfers are marginal, with lots of image artifacts from the digitalization process; sound varies from poor to terrible, and the computerized soundtrack music is loud, repetitive and distracting. Many of the extras like biographies and spacecraft details are simpleminded one page splash screens that are difficult to read and not worth the effort in any case.

Bottom line: good information, poorly presented.

From an historical point of view this 5 DVD set is fasinating. Especially if you have never seen the 25 minute films from the early NASA missions. Yes, the narration for these films is a little dated; talk of "free men everywhere" sounds a bit odd these days; but back in the 1960s, well it was a different world then. I was extremely disappointed, not so much with the quality of the film stock as the transfer to DVD. Volume One; Film One; "Freedom 7" has some dust stuck in the projector for the length of the feature. Not Good Guys!. Later missions done on video are much better. Also Volume One indicates 4 programs; but appears to have only 3; (at least I can't get program 4 to play on my DVD player); even the index listing only covers 3 programs. About the index listings for these DVDs. Each DVD has (except Volume One) 4 programs. Each DVD has 8 index points; none appear at the start of a program; they are randomly (?) located throughout the DVD. Again a bit silly. Also this 5 DVD set leaves out a number of Nasa missions. I'd love to see a properly done set including all Nasa missions, and properly indexed. Finally; the advertised extras on this DVD set are pretty lame. The 5 DVD set is a good effort; and worth getting (? ) if nothing better appears on DVD. (Fingers crossed something better appears!).

These DVDs have been directly copied from VHS tape. This is totally unforgiveable and after buying this set I felt cheated! I have been researching the Apollo space programme all my life and will happily watch films with the most tenuous of links to the events, but I've not even finished watching all of these discs because they are so poor. AVOID...

I purchased this series with eager anticipation. And while I'm not sorry I bought the set, I am somewhat dissapointed in the picture quality of much of the material. I know some of the sourced Nasa films are old, but I have some digitally remastered videotapes obtained from another, Nasa-affiliated online store, and they have better picture quality than these DVD's! That is simply not on, and it's obvious these disks were not mastered from the same source as those tapes. So until someone does this collection over again, this is the best you can do for now. I've no qualms with the content, however, except for the surprise omission of the Apollo 14 Fra Mauro movie. For the future, I strongly suggest a top-notch remaster and a dual-sided 6 DVD set incorporating the whole 30 film history of Nasa series. Such a set would be worthy of 6+ stars!

This set is essentially repackaged old footage. Educational films produced by NASA, so in the end they're educational but at times comes across as 60's era propoganda which might be interesting for some viewers. I would have preferred more raw space footage to all the footage of ground control. this set is okay as an historical document, not so good if you're looking for lots of awe-inspiring views of Earth from space,

First of all, hats off to Madacy Video for compiling such rare historical NASA footage. I'm pretty sure that that they did their best to obtain the best quality possible.

I'll talk from an eye of a television broadcaster, which is my full-time job. I'll leave the historical part to somebody else. It appears however that the info is good.

As far as the technical quality is concerned, I have to make the following observations:

The DVD mastering itself uses too much MPEG-2 compression and a low data rate. As a result, some artefacts occur such as blocking.

The type of analog video dropouts suggests that the material contained in this DVD was compiled from a variety of ANALOG sources such as VHS and U-matic 3/4".

One the first DVD, the footage was mastered to DVD from VHS and the audio used is from the normal linear mono audio track. The film was transferred with a film-chain 5-blade projector connected to a camera via a multiplexer box. - This is the cheapest film transfer. Furthermore, the green hue in the picture suggests that the camera videotaping the projector was an old misaligned tube camera.

On some other footage obtained by more professional formats, the picture quality is OK.

I have to point out that ALL the footage is PUBLIC DOMAIN. This means that any company can go down at NASA, get the original films, transfer them and re-publish them on DVD, THE RIGHT WAY.

I hope that one day Madacy Video, or anybody else will re-publish these public domain films the Right way. I've seen some clips of these same films transferred to video with a datacine film scanner, and the quality is simply amazing. I don't know why Madacy chose to go towards the easy way compromising seriously the quality.

I bought this DVD set and was apalled to learn that this company has simply re-packaged OLD NASA FILMS with a misleading new cover. These 1960's-70's-era films are garbage, with bad picture, bad sound, and narrators so terrible that you expect to hear a projector start skipping, just like when you were a kid in elementary school. Shame on this company. There are many excellent space videos out there--and this IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

This collection of four NASA films marks the beginning in this series of something watchable. After watching the previous volumes in this set it's obvious that NASA has come a long way in improving the quality of a lot of the space footage. The background music also reflects a less mundane approach.

"Opening New Frontiers," "We Deliver," "Launch and Retrieval of Satellites" and "Satellite Repairs" show the early Space Shuttle program, but neglect the R & D phase which really should be included in the series. The insistence on using only NASA films leaves a hole here. Sure, R & D is not too compelling, but none of this material is gonna keep you glued to your set. In spite of that there is a lot of decent material here. Shuttle launches, satellite deployments and rescues, interior shots, all are much better than NASA's earlier years.

Did you know that "by the mid-80s" we should be enjoying two shuttle launches per month? This is according to the first film, which focuses on the first four launches. It seems we're a bit behind schedule.

Madacy has included "extras" which should have been left behind. The bios of two of the four astronauts, as well as the page on Skylab and the summaries of the three Skylab missions belong on Volume 3 which covers Skylab. This disk is devoted to the shuttle, folks! It doesn't matter much, because the print is too small to read unless you're good friends with your set. The "challenging" trivia game is not worth the time to find your way back to the main menu.

The film clip, laughingly called, "A Montage of Soviet Mission Clips" has never been seen by the person who invented its title. It is actually a bit more than a minute showing an Apollo launch and first stage separation. The obviously non-Soviet radio exchange mentions "Apollo 11." While I realize that much of this material is boring, I would have hoped that someone at Madacy would have stayed awake long enough to get their facts straight. Also, someone was asleep at the switch in the edit room, because there is a moment at the end showing the narrator frozen as if the pause button on their VCR was pushed just a bit too late. But, regardless of the title, this clip has nothing to do with the subject matter on the disk. It should have been included with Volume 3 instead.

As with other Madacy releases, the scene access is unusable. Eight selections and not one leads to the beginning of a film, and all but two drop you off in the middle of a sentence. There is no chapter and time information available on screen, as should be with a properly produced disk. And speaking of time, the 120 minutes indicated on the jacket must have been approximated using a sundial. It's almost a half-hour short.

This disk is almost worth having by itself. Almost. But it certainly is ONLY for those interested in NASA films and space flight history.

After viewing several productions of Madacy Entertainment, I have found a common thread among all of their works--including this one--old material and poor production. I even got one DVD from them that had the right label on the disk, but the content was entirely something else. Their productions are cheap and apparently intended to loosen the customer's wallet, while providing a very low-quality product.

Advice: Avoid anything with their name on it.