Sing Along Songs: Sing A Song With Pooh Bear
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Cast: Chrisopher Robin, Winnie The Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, Roo
Extras: Word Time Vocabulary Activity, Songs of Note Musical Game
Rating:
Sing-along video tapes have long been a steady source of income for Disney, and I was a little surprised, just how long it took them to carry them over to DVD, the medium they are ideally suited for. Well, here they finally are. ’Sing Along Songs: Sing A Song With Pooh Bear’ is the first release in what is promised to become a long line of titles. It contains a great number of songs from various ’Winnie The Pooh’ shows and specials, all complete with the bouncing ball…
The quality of this release is exceptionally high throughout. The image is sharp and detailed, and the transfer is free of any speckles or blemishes. Even some of the older numbers like ’Heffalumps and Woozles’ have evidently been remastered to make sure they look as good as possible, and the effort clearly shows. Colors are rich and well saturated, edges are finely delineated, contrast is beautifully rendered with deep blacks and balanced highlights, and the image compression is without flaws.
The audio on the release is presented as a 5.1 channel Dolby Digital track, and once again, it is evident that some work went into this. While it is not a multi-dimensional mix by any means, it is nonetheless making use of the surround channels to create an engulfing sound filed with the listener in the midst of it. The older tracks have been cleaned up and no hiss or background noise distracts form the experience. The frequency response is natural and the tracks are free of distortion.
A few extras complement the release, such as a vocabulary game in various languages to support reading skills, as well as ’Songs of Note,’ a game that helps building rhythmic skills.
Perfect, inside and out, ’Sing Along Songs: Sing A Song With Pooh Bear’ is a release that belongs into any toddler’s and child’s arsenal of DVDs. The technical quality is top notch – and it is consistent, since the ’Sings Along Songs: The Lion King’ DVD is just as impressive – and the selection of songs is meticulous. I am very glad to see that Disney is actually putting a lot of dedication into these releases. Now, if they would only take off the annoying commercials in the beginning and auto-play and auto-loop the disc, this would actually have been the ’perfect’ children’s DVD.
