Search - 2003 Formula 1 World Championship Review on DVD

Wasting the DVD's Potential

John Nelson | Connecticut, United States | 03/08/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"As a fan of Formula One, I can't help but think how good this DVD could have been. Basically, what you have here is a VHS tape on DVD. Sure, the video and sound are better, but this disc makes almost no use of DVD's possibilities. For example, the overwhelming wish of F1 fans is for more in-car footage. Nothing conveys the feeling of speed, the agility, and, yes, the wheel-to-wheel racing that does take place in F1 like the car-mounted cameras do. And yet, all we get is a very basic, sequential report of each race, with all the standard footage including snippets of in-car video. For all it's deficiencies, the year 2000 review video did offer an "interactive" feature allowing access to race, pit, in-car, and telemetry views. The ideal season review disc would offer in-depth coverage of each race as well as access to separate driver's view video featuring the start and at least one full lap of each course. This disc is worth having for the Formula One fan, but future year end reviews will hopefully make better use of this format."

Yet another mediocre DVD

John Nelson | 02/24/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The DVD mastering is poor. The transfer is solid, good colors, but the video itself- most of which appears to be taken from the lame world feed- is not the greatest.1) Qualifying is close to all in-car, an improvement over the 2000 DVD. As to how the FIA can manage to govern the most technologically advanced cars on the planet and yet use big ugly low-resolution cameras that drop signals around trees is another story.Don't hit chapter + during qualifying or you'll be treated to 5-10 seconds of a black screen. The menuing on this DVD is very peculiar, though not as overdone as the 2000 DVD.Qualification shows JUST the pole-lap; no other highlights. If you're looking for the spinout that cost Raikkonen pole at Montreal, you need to look elsewhere.2) The vast majority of the image is from the world feed, so it looks pretty weak. If you taped all of the races on VHS, you're not going to get much better with this.3) Audio is front-channel only, probably stereo.4) No practice highlights either.Is it worth it? For completeness, maybe. if you're looking for a reference quality Formula One DVD, you've still got some waiting to do."