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Owl City: Live From Los Angeles Blu-ray Review

  • Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
  • Resolution: 1080i/60
  • Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
  • Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit), LPCM 2.0 Stereo (48kHz/16-bit), Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
  • Region: ABC (Region-Free)
  • Rating: Not Rated
  • Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
  • Run time: 353 Mins.
  • Studio: Lionsgate Entertainment
  • Blu-ray Release Date: February 7, 2012
  • List Price: $19.98

[amazon-product]B006OFN0L6[/amazon-product]

Purchase Owl City: Live from Los Angeles on Blu-ray at CD Universe

Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com

Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Performance
[Rating:2.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]

Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures

(All TheaterByte screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG at 100% quality setting and are meant as a general representation of the content. They do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)

The Performance

[Rating:2.5/5]

Owl City, nom de guerre for singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and Otawatonna, Minnesota native Adam Young is another of the social networking success stories that is becoming more and more common place these days amongst the younger generation. Young got his start posting his homemade musical concoctions to Myspace (remember them?) and by 2009  had two full-length indie albums under his belt when his major label debut Ocean Eyes landed. Suddenly, Young, or Owl City, had a multi-platinum hit with the single “Fireflies” and his album was one of the top downloads on iTunes.

But what is all the fuss surrounding Owl City? His music, for the less knowledgeable, is indie-electronica meets high school musings (“take a long hard look at your text books/’cause I’m history”) with some delusions towards rock pretense that often blend into one amorphous cloud of same-ishness. Not descriptive enough? Then how about, he cops the sound of The Postal Service or is in fact, a lighter, electronica version of Death Cab for Cutie, only without the intellectualism? Still need more? He’s a heavier version of David Gray, but a little less saccharine (and also less grown up). His music seems ripe for the climactic scenes of just about any CW series, actually.

Owl City: Live From Los Angeles, his first ever concert disc, captures the electronica artist, or rather, project, at L.A.’s Club Nokia in July 2011 during a 21-song gig in support of his latest album, All Things Bright and Beautiful. While the backup band and Adam Young both seem enthused, as do the crowd of mostly young, twenty-something women, the concert quickly gets bogged down in monotony, one song bleeding into the next and a threadbare set that doesn’t quite help the home viewer get into the spirit at all.

Video Quality

[Rating:4/5]

Owl City: Live From Los Angeles looks fairly good for a concert disc captured in high definition. The 1080i/60 AVC encodement is free from motion artifacts and life-like while the flashing stage lights don’t cause any macroblocking. The minimalist set isn’t exactly eye candy, but concert videos tend to be more about the music anyway.

Audio Quality

[Rating:4.5/5]

A lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit) and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 (48kHz/16-bit) soundtrack are the main audio options with a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix rounding out the offerings. Both high-res options are good, with the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix offering a strong amount of ambience capturing the performance space, musical lows and clear vocals. It also has a fine amount oif instrumental separation. Still, it is the LPCM 2.0 Stereo mix that is superior, offering more balance to the sound and less of a “hole in the middle” sort of feel. It also has a good amount of low frequency extension and very lively mid-range.

Supplemental Materials

[Rating:0.5/5]

I have to admit that, after sitting through what was a quite boring show for me, I wasn’t in the mood to sit through the sole extra included on the disc, which is an extended interview in HD with Owl City – so I didn’t. Fans may have a differing opinion.

The Definitive Word

Overall:

[Rating:3.5/5]

Owl City’s derivative electronica and whiny vocals may have an appeal for certain members of the Facebook generation, but if they would only dig a little deeper – well, let’s not go there. I don’t think there is any deeper with this guy. Pass on it unless you are in the demographic or are already enraptured by his nasally voice.

Additional Screen Captures

[amazon-product]B006OFN0L6[/amazon-product]

Purchase Owl City: Live from Los Angeles on Blu-ray at CD Universe

Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com

Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Performance
[Rating:2.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]

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