No comments about Great Hotels Season 3 - Episode 13: The Homestead.

2 comments about Historic Travel US - San Francisco - A Jewel in California's Crown DVD.

1. Wow. Some of the footage here is really rough and clearly shot by someone with a home camera. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just something that jumped out at me.
   
   All of the films here are of San Francisco at the turn of the century when the city was trying to move from being a small gold rush city and become a real metropolis.
   
   The city planners put a lot of effort inot growing the city and it shows here.
   
   The rough footage is my favorite because it's free of the promotional aspects of the other clips and made me feel like I was really learning the truth about the city at the turn of the century.



2. This DVD is a collection of tourist films and newsreel footage of San Fransisco shot in the first third of the 20th century. It's almost all black and white and has some silent footage with a musical score.
   
   It's interesting because I know the city very well and I liked being able to see what has changed over they years and what has remained the same.
   
   The golden gate bridge and chinatown shots are the best of the bunch on here, but it's all pretty good and I watched it several times.

No comments about Marvelous Margaretville! -- a glimpse of life in the northern Catskills early in the 21st Century, as seen by its residents.

No comments about Classic Business Films DVD: 1920s - 1960s Business Management, Opportunity, Development, Strategies, Free Enterprise & The American Dream.

1 comments about Night Music, Vol. 1 - A Naxos Musical Journey.

1. "Night Music" contains pleasant classical music accompanied by pretty European scenery.

   The scenes are nicely photographed, with content appropriate to the music and pleasing to watch. Although the pictures don't in any way depict a story, they depict scenic countryside and waterways around Europe -- pretty and uncontroversial. Altogether, a far more pleasing TV backdrop than your DVD player's default screen saver or repetative pictures of the musicians.

   The video quality is about average for DVD movies. The producers did not go to the extra expense to produce a really high quality encoding. If you are a fussy viewer (as I am) and have a high resolution TV (I do) then the beautiful scenery will occasionally be marred by encoding artifacts. However, if you think DVD movies all generally look great, then the video quality will likely please you.

   The music is nicely performed. Care has been taken to equalize volume levels and intensity and music mood, so that this DVD could be played as background music without worrying that some songs will be too loud and others too soft. The selection includes many very popular classical music pieces.

   My CD/DVD player is connected to my TV and uses a common set of speakers with the TV. The best thing about this DVD is that the TV shows beautiful scenery rather than the DVD player's (ugly!) default screen saver. If you can't understand watching musicans, except in live performances, then this is the DVD for you.

   The DVD includes a very brief text identifying the location of the video scenes. However, that information is brief and secondary to the main purpose of the DVD. If you want an actual travelog, look elsewhere.

No comments about Great Hotels Season 2 - Episode 21: The Driskill/ San Jose Hotel.

No comments about Great Hotels Season 2 - Episode 23: La Mansion Del Rio.

No comments about America's Steam Trains-On the Road With Frisco 1522.

No comments about Great Hotels Season 3 - Episode 14: The Sagamore.

No comments about Cruising America's Waterways: The Florida Keys.