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  • Full Frame
  • Dual Layer ( )
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  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Polish: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Portuguese: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Norwegian: Dolby Digital Surround
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  • Animated menus
Teletubbies - Here Come the Teletubbies/Dance With the Teletubbies
Roadshow Entertainment/Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 115 mins . G . PAL

  Feature
Contract

What’s with the name Teletubbies anyway? Of all things, surely these colourful aliens with aerials jutting from their heads and TVs embedded in their guts should be called Teletummies? Maybe the producers, referring to the babbling beasties’ obvious weight problems, are just taking the piss...

There was a time when I questioned the educational value of Teletubbies, but now the DVD releases can’t come quickly enough. Indeed, with the previous release Teletubbies - Animals Big and Small being popular with my daughter and on ever more frequent rotation at home, it was really starting to annoy the shit out of me.

As you may have guessed from the title this second release, Teletubbies: Here Come the Teletubbies/Dance With the Teletubbies, presents two hour-ish long tubby programs on the one shiny little disc. And quite apart from giving good value for money, this release actually seems a deal more interesting than the last

Here Come the Teletubbies (62 mins)
The baby in the sun has a good cack as the little tubs get up to all manner of new adventures. There’s counting games, memory games, a mystery to be solved, and parading column of crude CGI animals. They play with a few of Tubbieland’s plague of rabbits, jump in some puddles, water the flowers, and of course there’s much falling over to be done.

We also get to see a lot inside the Teletubbies’ cool pad. They roll out of bed, eat mounds of smiley faced Tubbie-toast from their eccentric tubbie-toaster, play with blurping levers, riding the internal slippery-dip and spill gallons of, erm, tubbie-custard. Needless to say Hoo-noo the google-eyed vacuum cleaner has his work cut out for him. In so far as human contact beamed from their omnipresent dark ruler the spinning windmill, Po receives images of kids donning raincoats, hats and galoshes and heading out into the rain. Tinky Winky receives images of kids playing on the beach (again in galoshes) with a yappy dog ‘Dazzle’ (sic) and a beach ball.

Dance with Teletubbies (53mins)
Less enjoyable (well I reckon, anyway) than the first half of the disc, the tubs take a leaf out of the Wiggles book; indulging in all manner of exotic dances and dance-related activities. Most dances are of the simple line-dancing variety, like the ‘Stamping and Stepping Dance’. In terms of human contact, Tinky Winky receives a signal featuring an excitable little girl and her tap shoes (who gives an impromptu performance in her garden), and Dipsy is flashed some footage of a bunch of kids going at it Footloose style.

Throw into the mix a CGI dancing bear, a stretch of peek-a-boo and Tinky-Winky giving us two and a half minutes in a tutu, and you basically round out the hour. Unlike the Wiggles however, my daughter wasn’t the least bit tempted to get up and join the tubs for a bit of a boogie; much preferring the variety and humour presented in the first feature.

If your child loves the Teletubbies then chances are they will get a kick out of Teletubbies: Here Comes the Teletubbies/Dance With the Teletubbies. Filled with almost two hours of tubby-fun, it’s sure to keep that terrible-two year old out of your hair for a little while. I guarantee they won’t be learning anything of value, but they won’t be gnawing on the furniture, moving the eggs from the fridge to your sock drawer or painting the dog either.

  Video
  Audio
  Extras
Contract

Taken from a broadcast video master, the image quality displayed by this latest Teletubbies release is of comparable quality to Teletubbies - Animals Big and Small. Clean and crisp, it displays a reasonable amount of detail, and both the vivid colours and black level are rendered perfectly. There are no film or compression artefacts to be seen, and video grain is evident only now and again in the odd lower-light background. Aliasing is also surprisingly absent.

With five Dolby Digital stereo tracks to choose from, you have the option of watching the Tubs go through their paces in several different languages. To my surprise, I found the Polish track to be the most entertaining; seeming to fit the Teletubbies and their antics perfectly. Produced on the cheap for a young audience, all five mixes are unspectacular but serviceable, never venturing far from the front speakers. What ‘dialogue’ does manage to issue from the centre speaker is clear and as intelligible as those gob-speaking Tubbies get. When we finally get some kids speaking, it’s a welcome relief to hear even a semi-articulate voice.

Nicely animated menus featuring a rather enthusiastic Tubbie-toaster and spinning Tubbie-toast provide access to the two main features. However, as nice as the menus are, they played badly on my particular player, taking significant time to load with each new selection (similar to the original Toy Story Box Set). Apart from the menus, no other extras are included this time around.


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  •   And I quote...
    "With this second DVD release from Britain's trippy alien tots, your two-year-old won’t be learning anything of value, but he or she won’t be gnawing on the furniture, moving the eggs from the fridge to your sock drawer or painting the dog either..."
    - Gavin Turner
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Toshiba SD-2108
    • TV:
          Panasonic TC-68P90A TAU (80cm)
    • Receiver:
          Yamaha RX-V795
    • Amplifier:
          Yamaha RX-V795
    • Speakers:
          B&W 602
    • Centre Speaker:
          B&W CC6 S2
    • Surrounds:
          JM Lab Cobalt SR20
    • Subwoofer:
          B&W ASW-500
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
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