Heaps Cool brings the hottest Top 40 music talents into your living room for a great party companion. It may not be as slick or as dancey as the Ministry of Sound 2003 DVD Annual, but this is more suitable to the Top 40 countdown listeners, not the trance and anthem enthusiasts.

The 22 video clips have been assembled in one video track, separated into 22 chapters. They flow from one track to another with only a slight black screen between each clip. This is far better than the format used on How Good is That?, where each video clip ends with a copyright warning, then a title change, which is quite time consuming if you're using it for a party where it's preferable to have no gaps. The only other criticism is that there is such a broad range of music here. It may have been more appropriate to have an R&B disc, then a teeny bopper disc, then a dancey disc or an alternative disc or something like that, as some of these video clips are just totally unknown and boring given the tone of the others.

Track listing...

The video is presented in a non-enhanced aspect with a variety of masked widescreen ratios including 1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1 and so on. Every clip pretty much has a different ratio, none of which are anamorphically enhanced.

Video-wise the transfer is quite nice, and it gets hard to determine what is a flaw in the transfer and what is artistic direction in the video clip. But generally speaking the only problems with the video are some slight cases of moire, notably during Say My Name, and some aliasing throughout, which isn’t helped by the lack of 16:9 enhancement. Film grain and artefacts are included for artistic purposes, so can’t fairly be discussed here. Colours too suffer from artistic direction, making it hard to determine what is meant to be correct. But simply put, all the video clips look great, even with their wash of grain or overly-saturated colours. If you pause some tracks and go through them frame by frame you may notice some slight compression-related artefacts, but if you’re that pedantic it could be suggested that you have issues. And yes I know I must have done that in order to say it...

This single-sided, single-layered disc doesn’t have a layer change to contend with, and subtitles are not included.

The single Dolby Digital 2.0 (surround-encoded) audio track features in all clips (duh) and is suitable, but not quite there. Maybe it was the Pro-Logic decoding, or maybe it is actually the encoded track, but the centre channel at times did sound a little distorted. Front left and right and rear left and right provide musical ambience to support things, and provide an enveloping effect. What would have been really nice would be a .1 channel to give that extra bass to the music. Bass levels for the 2.0 track are reasonable and pulsating, but not quite stomach churning. And for a party, that’s what you want, right? At least this way you don’t have to pay for it...

Scene selections and animated menus don’t really count as features.

For a mix of Top 40 stuff this holds up quite well, and could be a worthy companion for your next party – if that’s what you’re into. Along with the Ministry of Sound 2003 DVD Annual and How Good Is That? you have the ingredients for a good night’s entertainment.