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Studio:DVD International

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- Best of the lot!

I've bought several of the HD Window type Bluray discs... this is definitely the best of the lot. I'm playing them on a PS3, so maybe if you play them on something else the results will be different.

I don't see these as anything other than a way of turning your expensive video system into a soothing work of art when you aren't using it for anything else. I don't expect to be entertained by staring at it... I don't think you would be for very long. It has half-decent music, and lovely smooth motion of the fish, unlike some other HD window discs that I've got, where everything is quite jerky and you have to silence the music if you have any taste at all.

It isn't meant to be a movie or a centre of entertainment... it's something you put on to create a soothing atmosphere while you do something else, and it works very well for that.

- A fun distraction for an hour

Just as you would expect, this disc contains salt water fish tanks. There are five tanks to choose from, each with a different class of fish. The four main tanks allow you to choose between a complete view of the tank, a close-up (follow the fish around) and the edited highlights.

The 1920x1080p (AVC with about 20Mb average datarate) picture quality is sharp and detailed, and you can choose a nice classical music accompaniment piece, some cheesy jazz musak or the natural bubble sound of a tank.

You can also set it up to repeat the same tank over and over, or cycle through the tanks. It's fun for a while to watch and is a great background distraction for parties and having friends over, but don't expect to be riveted to the screen for the whole hour. Your friends will be amazed and your children will want to tap the glass.

Four stars since the footage is too short on the repeats and sometimes there is not enough fish action... They all hide behind the corals and reefs...

- Duration far too short.

This is well presented and the footage of the tanks is good whilst it lasts but each clip is astonishingly short. How hard would it have been to keep the camera running for, say, 30 minutes per tank instead of the paltry 3 or 4 minutes shown here?! I see little point in a fish tank that can't be used for relaxation and this can't because you just start to enjoy the view and it's over!

- Still not there

I have been looking for stuff to use on my HDTV when having friends over and had some hopes for this BD-title. I was a bit dissappointed though as the picture quality was not as good as I had hoped for and I wonder if it really was filmed in HD 1080p or equivalent. I believe they have upscaled the movie from 720p or 1080i.

- Good idea but badly done

This is a really good idea, to be able to play a disc and temporarily turn your telly into a fish tank. The illusion is spoiled however, by the poor framing of the shots - how can you pretend to yourself that you're looking at a real fish tank when the fish swim in and out of shot all the time? They disappear to the left and right and also up. Sometimes you can see the sides of the tank, if they were a bit more clever they would have used a tank with slanted sides which match up to the camera angle - it'd be cool if the fish nibbled perfectly on the edges of the screen.

Besides the poor framing, I thought there was far too much background (fake coral etc) and not enough fish action. I'd far rather see a blank blue tank with fish clearly visible all the time and bubbles streaming up through the water. I'd love it too if there was an ironic tank with the cliché diver figure or a shipwreck at the bottom.