Image's 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Chicago in Chicago looks terrific, a tribute to music video and documentary director Leon Melas' intelligent planning and the operators' skill with HD image capture. The show's simple and unfussy lighting design, which kept the illumination strong even as the techs shifted the hues, contributed to a solid and stable picture with no aliasing or noise. Details of costumes, instruments, and yes, the elder band members' well-earned wrinkles are readily visible. Colors are somewhat changeable, depending upon the camera angle and the degree of light; for example, in some shots, musicians' dark blue jeans appear as light green. In a feature film, these sorts of issues might have been color-corrected during post-production, but for a concert film, I suppose it makes sense to leave them as live "imperfections".
Unlike Soundstage concerts, the audience at the Concert One Pavilion was not fully illuminated for Chicago in Chicago, with the exception of a few interludes during which the cameras swept the crowd. However, with a stage so large and well-lit, the difference was insignificant, and Melas's shooting style was more front-oriented, with fewer shots from behind the band out into the crowd. Rarely does the image have dark areas, but those that occur appear to be appropriately black.
Interlacing artifacts were not an issue, while the image was in motion. (Screencaps are a different issue.) Image has once again opted for a BD-25, despite the inclusion of a 94-minute concert and over 40 minutes of supplemental material, most of it in hi-def. However, thanks to the efficiencies of the AVC codec, no compression errors appeared.
Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Soundstage uses the same audio mix for broadcast, DVD and Blu-ray. The credits for
Chicago on Chicago indicate that a separate mix was prepared specifically for Blu-ray, and the impact is immediately obvious on the disc's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. Any attendee of a live concert knows that, especially if you're close to the stage, the bass tones are
felt as much as heard. The Blu-ray mix takes full advantage of lossless encoding and the LFE track to supply a deep, tightly focused bass accompaniment for which a good quality subwoofer is essential. You won't find any of the cheap, showy "boom" that impresses in chain store demos but, in practice, overwhelms other instruments. These are the kind of firm bass notes (and drumbeats) that provide a solid foundation for vocals and other instruments, including the all-important brass that are Chicago's signature. If you have loose objects lying about the room, some of them may rattle at high volumes, but the most important impact will be on your body. These bass notes play at registers you will experience tactilely (but not at volumes that constitute an assault, unless your system is improperly calibrated).
About those brass: They don't sound especially "live", nor did they, I suspect, at the Charter One Pavilion. Chicago may have started as a local club band, but it long ago moved to venues of a scale that required its wind instruments to become the equivalent of electric guitars. Even in live shows, fans hear them through microphones, a mixing booth and loudspeakers. The Blu-ray offers the added benefit of an engineer's post-performance adjustments, perfecting the balance among the individual instruments and the alternating vocals of the different singers. And let's face it; the engineer's job can't have been much of a challenge. Chicago has been performing these songs for so many years that you can practically see them conducting each other, and you can feel the connections among band members. This is a highly professional mix of a first-rate performance.