Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.


Since we folks have begun to take our home theater set-ups seriously enough, there have been a few calibration discs released for the audio/video- phile in each of us. About ten years ago there was a DVD disc from the magazine Sound and Vision which assisted in the calibration for the beginners that we were, and this was the standard which all others that followed it would have to meet. There have been about two others that I have used, but none have held my hand as much until now. Disney has released a two disc Blu-ray called Disney WOW: World of Wonder.  This is one of the very few calibration discs that available that is available with HD Video and the only one I know of that contains HD Audio.

But let's start at the beginning of this first disc. When you pop it in, you'll notice toward the bottom of your screen that you have three options; Discover, Optimize and Experience.  
DISCOVER:
   Home Basics With Goofy
   Beginner
   Advanced
   Disney Blu-Ray
  
Discover covers pretty much everything about understanding the very basics to some advanced tech talk. The first item under this heading is a very basic introduction to home theater and high definition which may bore some of the more advanced viewers, yet it may answer simple questions to those who have a basic novice idea of how this all works. Home Basics with Goofy is about a 10 minute show which covers seven different rudimentary aspects of this subject.  This does feature Goofy, but it has the instructions narrated by a voice that sounds a lot like John McLeish, the voice who narrated all of those Goofy shorts from the 1940s. This of course is deliberate, as Goofy was usually the guinea pig in all of those hilarious instructional videos. The basics covered here are - Sound, Picture, Displays, Cables, Resolution, Blu-Ray and Screen Size. If memory serves me correctly, all of these shorts were available on Disney.com when Blu-Ray first came on the market with the purpose to explain why it was essential to upgrade your archaic equipment.
There are some more short commercials under Beginner such as the superiority of Blu-Ray, how with BD-Live you can experience things like Lost University (as in the ABC show Lost), and a cool split screen that shows the difference is picture resolution between DVD (480p) and Blu-Ray (1080p).

In Advanced, we get some more technical descriptions of what makes up a picture, what  is sound, understanding compression, the difference is between interlace and progressive video and the importance of 24 frame playback.

Disney Blu-Ray talks is basically more commercials on reasons to buy Blu-ray discs, such as the Digital Copy of movies that come with most Disney releases, the interactive BD-Live and racking up those Disney Movie Rewards by buying these movies and then entering codes hidden inside the Blu-ray   literature to an online site which is then traded for some pretty cool Disney-related items for all ages.

OPTIMIZE:
   Beginner: Quick and easy Calibration
   Advanced: Premium Calibration Tools
   Pixel Flipper

Beginner has three submenus; Introduction, Video and Audio.  The Introduction is a 35 second summary of what this chapter contains. This is followed by a text instructing you how to navigate through the test screens.  The Video section helps you calibrate your picture by showing you six screen tests for Brightness, Contrast, Aspect Ratio, Color, Sharpness, and Viewing Angle.  Before each test, they remind you to set your atmosphere to the normal settings in which you view your DVDs and Blu-ray movies.  As long as you listen to the instructions carefully, just about anyone can calibrate their TV monitors by themselves.

The audio is even more fun as you get to calibrate your speakers to the perfect setting for viewing. Depending on your set up, this has four different audio options; Stereo, 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1. My set-up is capable of all four, and I went through each of them, but I really only needed to go through the 7.1 set-up to make sure that all of my speakers were wired to the right inputs,  and that they were all at the best audio levels possible. These two are the most important, but it also goes on to test the polarity of each speaker set up. The Noise Floor determines the natural ambient noise in the room where you watch movies by playing different levels of recorded pink noise.  My noise floor is -40 dBFS, by the way.  Then there's the Buzz and Rattle Test, this is to check for noises that may affect surrounding room items (lamps, windows) and cause them to...well, buzz or rattle.  Once you're finished you can enjoy two snippets of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 7.1 surround sound.

Advanced brings you to a more precise mode of calibration. The video goes so far as to calibrate different kinds of monitor displays. There are five different types of monitors to choose from, LCD/Plasma, CRT, DLP, Projector and OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode...I had to look this one up).  Depending on which monitor type you choose, you now have between six and eight different video calibration tests to go through.  There is an evaluation tool for each of the displays with many different screen shots to evaluate everything from whiteness, advanced whiteness, purity and so on. The audio tool pretty much goes over what you did in the Beginner level, except now you have the choice to use an SPL Meter or without one.  It also test the audio/video synch which could be very important as well, but this nuance changes with almost every channel or Blu-ray you view, so to set-up your system with this test would be to calibrate it to watch Disney Blu-rays only.

Expert brings even more options to tweak especially in the video section. Yet the audio tests are basically the same. If you are indeed an expert by now, you can choose the option Compound Test Chart which you'll then already know what to do when each and every test pattern pops up on the screen.  There is an option called HD Shoot Out which compares again the Standard Definition against the High Definition formats, yet this is not a side by side comparison, but videos on the own, which you would manually have to switch.  Then there is something called the Encoder Stress Test which boasts to be able to put any and every professional equipment and also the most talented compression engineers.  Last but not least there is something called Pixel Flipper. This is basically for those of us who own LCD/Plasma monitors who have encountered burned-in images or stuck pixels. The Pixel Flipper will turn on and off each of your monitor's pixels between 24 and 29 times per second. They recommend you to keep this test on for an hour.

EXPERIENCE:
   WOW - Ultimate HD Experience
   BD Live

WOW - Ultimate HD Experience goes through 30 scenes from different Disney/Pixar films like Toy Story, Up,  Wall-E, G-Force,  Bolt,  Monsters, Inc.,  The Prestige,  Nature's Journey and much more.  You can play it on a loop, or even on a Retailer Loop.  This is pretty cool, but I do not know what the difference is between the Retailer's Loop and the home use Loop.

BD-Live is just going to connect to the Disney website and give you a few options about what to watch. Trailers of upcoming theater films, up-coming Blu-ray films, Extras and so on.

Disc Two is called VISIONS.  This is basically a showcase for your now finely-tuned home theater.  There are eleven scenes, including a fireplace crackling, ocean waves at sunset set to ambient music, a Wisconsin River Valley mid-Summer enhanced with ambient music and Disney magic, and so on.


What else comes with the Blu-Ray?
*It comes with a fifty-three page booklet explaining all of the tests and disc content. I referred to this booklet a few times already, a very handy extra indeed.
*It also comes with a four page booklet explaining the VISIONS disc.
*A Blue filter Card to help with the hue and color adjustments.


Is this a necessity? Not really. Yet if you want your home theater to look and sound the best it can, then this is absolutely necessary.  I was a little disappointed that Goofy was only present in the first basic video, but the wealth of classic Disney scenes throughout the disc makes up for this. There are times, especially in the audio calibration tests where it takes more time than usual to load, but these two infractions are minor at best. For all of the calibration discs I have come across, this one makes it easiest to take charge of your display and audio.  No other one (that I know of) is equipped to hadle 6.1 and especially 7.1 surround sound. 

I don't think I'll ever be up to the Expert level, but I am pretty sure that it wasn't created for people like me, I am an enthusiast not a professional.  I'll leave this portion to The Geek Squad.

Disney WOW: World of Wonder
Directed by: Richard J. Casey & John S. Banks
Written by: Richard J. Casey, John S Banks, Robert Smith and Steve Wiedemann
Starring:  Goofy
Length:  240 minutes
Released: 11/02/2010
Rated: NR
Rating: 5 stars 

Recommended: Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day