A 26-episode World War II documentary, Victory at Sea is one of the most important series in the history of television. Made in 1952, the show was a huge success, winning many major awards and even spawning albums featuring the orchestral score by Richard Rodgers, best known for his musicals with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. Produced with the full cooperation of the U.S. Navy, each 26-minute program consists of black-and-white wartime film set to a narration by Leonard Read more…
February 28th, 2010 on 1:16 am
The History Channel and NBC NEWS should be ashamed of themselves for putting out this long awaited DVD version of Victory at Sea. I watched these shows as a kid back in the 50s and waited for the DVD version. I was warned by someone that the sound wasn’t great, but I bought the set anyway. Big mistake. You have to watch some of them with a remote in your hand to constantly raise and lower the sound. The narration is too low and the music is too loud. A review on another website defending the DVD set said that there is a warning on the box that says “audio levels may vary”. Yeah, right, but the sites that sell the DVDs don’t point that out. This was very disappointing. I can’t, and won’t, recommend this set to anyone.
February 28th, 2010 on 6:44 am
I was greatly dissapointed in this 4 disc set from the History Channel. I have VHS versions of some episodes, and they are much superior in both picture and sound quality. What happened? The editing/compilation of the DVD’s is VERY poorly done, the intro to each segment (by Peter Graves) is much louder than the following program, so you constantly have to run the volume up and down ( and not just a little +/- 100% ). The resulting sound is muddy, with severe flutter and poor dynamic range ( film not kept tight on the sound drum during transfer ). The narration of the episodes is hard to hear, while the sound effects and music come blaring out at you – drowning out everything. The overall effect is about what you might expect of a high school kid’s first attempt at making a home movie – and only a C- at that. There is no capability to play the entire disc, you must select each episode from the main menu, and then select “play this episode” again from the sub-menu, repeated seven times for each disc. I was supremely dissapointed – I have many History channel DVD’s, and this is far and away the worst – a prime example of “let’s make a quick buck – people are too stupid to care” thinking…The History Channel ought to be ashamed of themselves !!! if I had paid the $ 60.00 list price I would have really been outraged – as it was for $ 40.00 I still felt cheated and ripped off. It is hard to imagine what the producers of the original series would think – this was one of the finest original programs ever shown on TV – and to have the DVD’s be so crudely done – no attempt to clean up the picture, no effort put into making the sound anywhere close to even, some episodes are very loud ( even distorted ) and some you can hardly hear, the inconvienient playback features, and cheesy packaging all contribute to the worst transfer, poorest DVD watching experience I have ever come accross. A Golden Rasberry candidate if ever there was one.