South Park - Vol 2

Hmmm. Does anybody even care about reading reviews of the Series 1 South Park DVDs anymore? Surely everybody's already got their DVDs (or videos), watched them a few times, then either gone cold on the series or are happily downloading Series 3 shows off the net...

Anyway, if you haven't got the old episodes yet, these Warner DVDs seem pretty good. Volume 2 contains the first South Park episode I ever saw, An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig, plus Death, Pinkeye and Tom's Rhinoplasty. All very good episodes, and it's amazing how well they hold up considering I first saw them about two years ago - they still seem funny!

I have issues with the way the disc is authored though. Each episode is a chapter in itself; you can't skip to different parts of the episode, and you also can't skip to another episode, you have to return to the main menu each time. I found it annoying, but I guess it's no worse than video...

When I first saw South Park on SBS, I was quite disappointed with the picture quality. There was a grubby look to the images, and this is reproduced (though not as badly) on the DVDs. I don't know for sure whether the American source video looks bad or whether the NTSC-to-PAL conversion degrades the quality, but the picture is not as sharp as I was hoping.

A side effect of converting from NTSC video to PAL is that the 30 frames per second of US video must be reduced to 25 fps in Australia. This looks better on the DVD than on SBS, where on fast moving objects you could see bad 'decisions' made by the converter. Pausing a videotape recorded from the TV will show this - you'll see two frames on top of each other as the converter tried to mingle them. The DVD is generally satisfactory here.

Presented in Dolby Digital 2-channel stereo, this disc is a definite improvement on the SBS broadcast, with enough definition to hear the poor vocal recordings in many parts. You can hear where a pop-shield wasn't quite able to guard a microphone against plosives (hard consonants like 'B' and 'P').

Dynamic range and bass are also far superior to that heard on TV, but this isn't surprising. Over-the-air TV sounds terrible. Quality is compromised to protect 2" speakers in old TV sets from damage, and also because our TV standard doesn't allow for the vast dynamic range that digital audio can give us.

Strange that we get Dutch and French subtitles, but no English ones, isn't it? I would have liked subtitles for everything Kenny says, but I suppose that would spoil the fun for people who try to figure out everything he says.

You also get a Comedy Central trailer for Series 1 of South Park, but my favourite extra is the individual episode introductions by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

Personally, I would prefer to get my copies of American shows in NTSC format, because there is NO extra resolution to be had from converting NTSC video to PAL, plus you get the degradation of the NTSC-PAL standards transfer.

However, if you want the PAL format for whatever reason, these discs look better than the video tapes, and also work out cheaper per episode. Can't go wrong, really!