14 Years of TLK

Congratulations to everyone who cares about this date. I know that this year many decided to mark the date of the limited release of "The Lion King", but in past years more attention was given to the film's all-American premiere, and I've gotten used to July 24th — after all, this number has meant something to me for almost five years now, since back in 2003 I read a congratulatory message on the cartoon's release in the guestbook of some website. And besides, I'm too lazy to change passwords :) I only learned about the 15th not that long ago anyway.

To honor such an occasion, I decided to watch the classic theatrical version of the cartoon, the one given a wide release 14 years ago. I probably last watched it on a videotape with a voice-over translation, back before the SE version came out. This time I'd be watching it from a licensed DVD with the original soundtrack. I also decided to check how the Xbox 360 plays video, since my main nineteen-inch LCD monitor is connected to the console anyway, and I was once again too lazy to reconnect it to the laptop, while the regular TV and the seventeen-inch CRT monitor were out of the question. Naturally, the first film I watched on the Box was TLK.

The disc read fine, although a quick search for information said that consoles play region 2, not region 5 — maybe it's because the disc is Ukrainian, or maybe the drive's firmware plays a role. I'm too lazy to figure it out; the main thing is that it works. The picture turned out good, no different from what the computer produced — a shame, of course, that there's no way to watch DVD and HD on something bigger. But the sound was a pleasant surprise: for the first time I could enjoy the audio at maximum volume without the extraneous noise that was always there when output through the built-in sound card. And the music in this cartoon is one of its main components. Now I can think about getting a proper sound system to replace the pair of speakers with a subwoofer.

As for the viewing itself, there's no point going on about it — others have said it all already.