Info:
DVD Release Date: June 8, 2004 (Universal Home Video)
color/677 mins
MSRP: $59.98
Number of discs: 4
Episodes per disc: Disc 1 (Episodes 1-4), Disc 2
(Episodes 5-8), Disc 3 (Episodes 9-12), Disc 4
(episodes 13-14).
Number of episodes: 14
Languages and subtitles: English, Closed Captioned,
Subtitles in French and Spanish.
Special features: None
Review (out of 5 stars):
Video quality: 4.7/5
Audio quality: 4.5/5
Special Features N/A
Menu Navigattion 5/5
Overall: 4/5 (needs extras!!)
Thoughts:
I love it when a DVD set comes together! The A-Team
was one of the most popular action series of all-time.
Mr. T became a TV icon and he probably created a
fashion statement with his hair and gold chains. The
A-Team ruled television in the early 80's and was
always heavily watched in syndication, usually paired
with Knight Rider (which is also out on DVD, in
August!).
Let's start this in-depth review with the packaging.
It is very nice. It comes in a slip sleeve, which you
remove, in order to get to the case, which is a
digipak case. In the case they have nice photos,
episode titles & info, and character bio's on the
A-Team crew -- all surrounding the four discs. Each
disc has the main four characters' faces: Hannibal,
B.A., Murdock, and Face. They also have episode
breakdowns on the disc (like disc one has episodes 1-4
written), which is always good to have. The slip
sleeve has the cover of The A-Team themselves and the
case cover has the famous A-Team van (both of which
you can see above). I had a hard time putting the
case back in the slip sleeve though. It's easy to
take out, but hard to put back in -- at least for me.
The menu screen is very well done. The theme is
playing in the background, with video clips from
different episodes playing while you choose if you
want to Play All, Episodes, or Languages. When
choosing an episode, they have a nice brief synopsis
with the original date before you hit play. You can
also have subtitles in Spanish and French, if you
don't know English too well. Yes, there is closed
captioning as well. You can find a photo of the menu
screen above.
One thing I really like is that there are scene
selections, so you don't have to fast forward to your
favorite scene. Or you can do it even quicker by
chapters with your DVD remote. The episodes are about
47 minutes in length, some more, some less, but
completely unedited. Fans will be very happy that the
episode preview for each episode is in tact before the
opening credits. If you are not familiar with it, it
shows clips from the episode with the A-Team beat
playing in the background. I haven't seen those in
such a long time. They run about 30 seconds to a
minute. Also, the first two episodes are in their
original format, a two-part episode as a TV-movie.
The original credits are in this TV-movie as well,
something that is not seen in syndication. They roll
over during the actual show. In syndication they show
the normal opening theme.
The video is excellent and I was very impressed with
it. It looked great for an 80's show. Kudos to
Universal for making it look marvelous. The audio is
good too, but I don't think it's better than the
video. The audio is in mono, but it sounds good for
mono.
My one complaint is that they have no extras at all.
Original promos, cast interviews, or bloopers would
have been nice. If they plan on making a season two,
which they better, they should do everything they did
for season one, but add extras. I'm sure they could
have fit some extras on disc four of this set, as
there are only two episodes on that disc.
*** We are bringing you this review because we want to
make up for not reviewing a few sitcoms that we
couldn't obtain, like Friends Season 7, The
Flintstones Season 1, and The Dick Van Dyke Show
Season 4 (we did Season 3 though). Every other sitcom
since we started this system, we have covered so far.
We are also going to review Knight Rider late next
month. ***
-- Reviewed by pavanbadal on 06/04/04
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