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Odyssey: The Mind's Eye Presents Luminous Visions

Odyssey: The Mind's Eye Presents Luminous Visions

List Price: $24.98
Your Price: $22.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: nice geometric abstractions
Review: Finally, some computer animations without silly creatures, alien planet landscapes, ...female robots, or any attempt at telling some kind of story. Just nice morphing colorful geometric abstractions to trip out to - also is mellow enough to just have looping in the background. Looks awesome on my new high definition digital 53-inch projection TV.

The Music: I stopped listening to Tangerine Dream 15 years ago. Of course, you can play any kind of pulsating, flowing, hypnotic music you want while watching this DVD and it'll work just fine.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: nice geometric abstractions
Review: Finally, some computer animations without silly creatures, alien planet landscapes, ...female robots, or any attempt at telling some kind of story. Just nice morphing colorful geometric abstractions to trip out to - also is mellow enough to just have looping in the background. Looks awesome on my new high definition digital 53-inch projection TV.

The Music: I stopped listening to Tangerine Dream 15 years ago. Of course, you can play any kind of pulsating, flowing, hypnotic music you want while watching this DVD and it'll work just fine.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: *** WARNING: highly compressed, noisy...etc. etc. etc. ***
Review: I bought this DVD with the high hopes I be blown away by some very tight, creative 3d morph visuals.

I'm very dissapointed. My friend an I watched it last night, and unfortunately were apalled at the quality, or lack thereof.

Principle complaints in order of irritation level:

1. The compression is horrible throughout many of the sequences. Sometimes the compression is so bad the artifacts cause blurring of the entire scene by as much as 20 percent. This goes away for a few scenes though -maybe 8 minutes of the film has acceptable compression.

2. The rendering framerate of the 3d animation wavers between 15 and 30 fps -with rare leaps to 60 fps, which contrast so much to the choppy parts that you wonder, "oh why couldn't it just all be 60?" It's like watching someone play Quake on a 486.

3. The resolution of the 3d animation was rendered at different sizes. Then they were all scaled to a common DVD resolution. The result is blurred aliasing, which combines with the compression to turn many of the scenes into mud.

4. The textures are very noisy, sometimes so noisy the entire screen looks like snow, making it very hard to watch.

5. The bump maps used in rendering the 3d shapes often don't tile, making obvious borders where they should tile, but don't. It's very distracting.

6. The camera animation is choppy, jerky, and not very fluid.

7. Many of the animations have hitches and pops which are obviously mistakes, but left in.

Ok, I admit I watched this movie sober, but I'm glad I did because I would have been more dissapointed had I been high.

I wish I could return it but now I'm stuck with it... :-(

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A must for Tangerine Dream fans
Review: Since another reviewer has already dealt with the visual half of this release, I thought I would review it from the perspective of a long-term Tangerine Dream fan.

This release has several attractions for the TD fan:

- A chance to hear TD write in a more rhythmic, "techno" style. Some of the rhythms are reminiscent of their 70s sequencer material, but with 90s polish and sensibilities. While I doubt we will ever hear any of these tracks on the dance floor, some of it does have that feel. However, the material has quite a bit of variety, with classical elements (a la White Eagle), and a "progressive" feel as well at times. Overall, I rank this at the top of their recent music that I have heard (although there are many recent TD releases that I haven't heard, they are quite prolific!).

- A relatively short but dense interview with TD, including brief clips of a recent concert (I wish they would release a whole DVD of that!), as well as Edgar talking a little bit about everything.

- There really is a full-length CD thrown into the DVD box, which contains about 75 minutes of soundtrack music for this film (thereby providing an additional 30 minutes of music for which there was no corresponding footage). Thus you can listen to the music away from your DVD player (I'm listening to that CD while writing this).

Thus, I can say that any TD fan that has a good number of their releases will want this one as well, especially if their musical taste runs to a bit of techno as well.

By the way, I did find the animation quite enjoyable as well (similar to some of the more abstract videos seen on MTV's "AMP" program).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Yoichiro Kawaguchi Showreel
Review: The computer animation shorts of Yoichiro Kawaguchi have been a feature of the ACM SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater for over 10 years. Some of the shorts are available on VHS through the Association of Computing Machinery, however, this DVD features an extended selection of the Kawaguchi material, that is hard to find anywhere else. The technical quality far exceeds that found on VHS and all the material is presented continuously rather than scattered among various SIGGRAPH tapes. For fans of abstract computer animation and electronic music, it does not get much better than this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Yoichiro Kawaguchi Showreel
Review: The computer animation shorts of Yoichiro Kawaguchi have been a feature of the ACM SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater for over 10 years. Some of the shorts are available on VHS through the Association of Computing Machinery, however, this DVD features an extended selection of the Kawaguchi material, that is hard to find anywhere else. The technical quality far exceeds that found on VHS and all the material is presented continuously rather than scattered among various SIGGRAPH tapes. For fans of abstract computer animation and electronic music, it does not get much better than this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bubbles machines and candy beverages for everyone!
Review: This cd goes great with most of the cds I've reviewed. Lovely abstractions. I have had this DVD for nearly five years. and it is the best abstract computer animation art out there. Trust me, I have a large collection. The music is not the best but the graphics are phenomenal. Try listening to something like Cafe Del Mar 7 or a Buddha Bar compilation with this dvd playing. Try this an hour or so before you retire for the evening. God Bless You... it looks even more awesome on a digital tv with progressive scanning...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is definately eye-candy!!!
Review: This is quite the deal for those searching for a visual treat! Even though Tangerine Dream isn't my bag, it was still a nice perk for purchasing this DVD title. I found this title from the folks of Mind's Eye to be very hypnotic, and it's versatile with just about any genre of music. My only complaint is that some of the images get a little repetitive, hence the 4-star grade.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: As good as a mid-90's screen saver
Review: This is really dated and is really not something that should be bought these days. It was as good as a bunch of mid-90's screen savers.

Very disappointing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very nice but not the best I've seen.
Review: This presentation is fluid and vibrant, but it is almost entirely sphere-based animation, so there is not a lot of variation on the general theme. Also there are points in the video where it is obvious that the DVD was generated from analog originals. Overall it definately kept my attention and the music was excellent.


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