Customer Reviews

OVER CALIFORNIA - Format: [Blu-Ray Movie]

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

 

 

I have the Blu-ray Washington the Beautiful in High Definition and it is fantastic. So I was excited to purchase Over California. NO comparison! Over California was filmed in the early 90's, poor quality and very dated

Not a bad doc but also certainly not excellent. Lots of great helicopter shots not particularly well organized. Good music/fairly well edited good narator.

Regardless of the price paid, I expect decent quality in a DVD advertised as Blu-ray. Not only was the disc not in 1080p, but the quality of the picture was very poor in several spots, with artifacts and drop-outs. The film is at least a decade old - they show the Raiders football team in the L.A. Coliseum - they moved back to Oakland in 1995! Its obvious the production was not filmed with high-definition cameras, but was remastered to a higher pixel count without any increase in quality.

I wasn't that thrilled with the scenic production either. Far too much time spent circling skyscrapers and not enough over other points of interest. The tour of San Diego was especially cheap and covered only the harbor area.

I managed to get my copy for $9.99. It was filmed in 1994. Apparently the recording is in 1080i although that means nothing to me because my flatscreen is 720p. It's encoded in MPEG-2 but they maxed out the bitrate and it looks pretty darn good. For the price, it's a really neat demo with the only con being the elevator music.

Not a total disappointment. Some great aerial shots of California, but I think this could have been done much better than it was.

This is a low resolution video with visible grain you will see from the 1st images.
Waiting for a new true hd version would make this video finally presentable on a large screen.

Purchased this expecting to find some high quality footage of the Sierras. Unfortunately, most of the mountain shots are centered around Tahoe, with a few images of Yosemite valley. Was also hoping for shots of Mt Shasta (which appears to be on the cover -- though I could be mistaken).

The footage appears be taken in the early 90s, so it's pretty dated. It's also a 1080i presentation, so it's not the highest resolution possible to really exercise your HD TV.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed by this one.

I already own 'Over America' which is excellent but I needed a more comprehensive view of California. As I live in Australia and visits to the USA are few and far between these BR-DVD s allow us to view places that we have been to. Quality is excellent and there is a spoken commentary even though on is not listed on the box. We have learned a lot about California from watching this movie. LA and San Diego get good coverage and these are places that we have visited. Top marks for the Death Valley sequences. My only misgivings were the amount of early morning and late afternoon shots which although scenic made it hard to place yourself. I just wish it were longer.

If you feel compelled to buy this you should save some money and get the regular version as it is not so great in blu-ray. Many parts are grainy and it is a bit of a rip to have this repackaged in blu-ray without any real advantage to it. As far as the substance goes there are features that go by unlabeled, the proportion of material is skewed, i.e. there's too much San Francisco and too little Yosemite. Save your money and catch it on PBS.

THis is Great. If you ever wanted to tour the Great state of California or take a tour, you will love this one. You can watch it many times in High Definition Quality. If you want to hear Music instead, that will work well with company. I have the Whole set and love it.

Jay Hoyt