Peter Gabriel: Play

I would have to disagree with the other reviewer's glowing remarks about the video quality being better than VHS or laserdisc. To me the artifacts of MPEG encoding are clearly visible (blocky artifacts) in the rendering of this DVD, at least on my once state-of-the-art Philips DVD player.

Since DVDs are MPEG encoded, the video is compressed. The amount of compression is a variable that is left as a choice for the person doing the video encoding and mastering of the DVD. It seems to me as though, in order to fit the high resolution DTS audio tracks onto the limited space available in a 2-layer commercial DVD format, they had to sacrifice the video quality.

In fact, the pictures look decidedly worse than their VHS counterpart, but it doesn't matter, because the real reason for buying this disc is for the high resolution audio, and for that alone it's worth the price. The pretty and brilliant pictures are just frosting on the cake, so to speak.

"Play" is a dream come true for any fan of Peter Gabriel's music who also loved his decidedly avant-garde, passionately produced video clips (without which he may never have won the temporary celebrity of being a top 40 pop star). "Play" is genuine state of the art in DVD design and production. The definition of DVD shows the inherent limitations of the contemporary media in his early clips - but these are still vastly superior to quality of the original versions I own on VHS tape and LaserDisc. The more recent clips are startlingly clear and very impressive viewing.

Perhaps the greatest attraction of this DVD is in the choice of audio - with the original stereo mixes as a reference, and the full bore 5.1 remixes made especially for this DVD from the original master tapes by long time Gabriel associate and producer Daniel Lanois. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds great, but this is the first DVD to take full advantage of 24bit/98kps DTS decoding - and the DTS really kicks. The surround mixes are impressive, but tasteful - allowing you to discover surprising nuances in each song.

Once you've heard these surround tracks, you'd have to be a very hard-nosed purist to choose plain old stereo.

I like the way that Peter has laid out the menus (and the whole packaging) - and also his choice of bonus material. If I wanted to impress anyone with what DVD is capable of, then this is the first disc I'd reach for.

This is the perfect companion to the fully digital surround sound DVD "Growing Up Live" and continues Peter Gabriel's proved dedication to his art and to the fans who've supported him loyally for at least the last three decades.