The Cross of Thoth [DVD]

I wish there was a way to give zero stars. This DVD took several tries to even get through it once. In fact, I was never able to watch chapter 3 all the way through because it kept stalling and then skipping to the beginning of chapter 4 without me even pressing a button on the remote. The main failures of this DVD fall into two categories: First, the disk was of such poor quality that it would not play. It kept freezing and stalling in the same places on 4 seperate devices (including my PC). Secondly, the comments about the music (which I ignored before buying, based on my intense personal interest in the subject) are spot-on. The music is so distracting it takes away focus from the narrative, which is infuriatingly softer than the "background" music. Its like trying to listen to a conversation in a loud bar atmosphere ... impossible to follow, and increasingly annoying especially since I really, really wanted to hear what was being covered. Please listen to the comments about the music. They are legitimate. And also avoid purchasing this because the quality of the product is so poor that it never did play all the way through even after dozens of tries on various players. AAAArrrghh!

I was very disappointed with this DVD for the following reasons:

1. The cover suggests that Crichton Miller stars on the DVD (as his name is in bold), However, it DOES NOT include him at all, but Phillip Gardiner.

2. There is an annoying, awful new age-ish music playing in the background all the time (sorry guys but get a life whats wrong with just a plain old documentary, if I want to chill out I'll do my own thing).

3. But mainly, there is absolutely no order to the DVD at all. It just starts off without any decent introduction to the subject area and assumes you already know averything about the subject.

4. It is a simplistic presentation which is a great shame as the subject area is so interesting and it has not been of value to the original work of Crichton Miller.

Shame.

Normally I stick to reviewing the content being presented, but this video is so bad you can barely concetrate on it enough to remember it. If you are the type of person who can easily tune out distractions you may be able to watch this. If you have any trouble concentrating when distractions are present, do not buy this film as the background music intrudes seriously on the film. As another veiwer mentioned there is also a problem with the DVD playing correctly. My Blu-ray player was the only one in the house able to play it completely through and even it had problems showing the beginning as it froze several times for way more than a few seconds.

About the sound: This narrator does have something good to say that "could" be enjoyed if it weren't for the constant background music. This sedate, very low-key gentleman is trying to talk to us about his ideas while competing with wailing guitars, pop vocal music and other terrible background music. Ever try in vain to listen to your favorite radio station as another station begins to cross-talk on top of it??? This is the effect you get on this DVD.

From what I've been able to figure out Phillip Gardiner is the director of this entire series and it was produced on a home computer using a combination of interview footage, cheesy computer graphic images of crosses and music from friends. He should definitly stick to writing as he knows zero about production values. The interludes meant to segway between interview segments are where you find the graphics and they go on MUCH TOO LONG, so long that you quickly realize how little information is really contained in the film. Keep the fast forward button handy but don't hit the skip chapter button because this DVD has very few of them and you may find yourself at the end.

If you insist on adding this information to your home library, I would highly suggest that you save a few dollars and buy the audible audio version or rent the video from amazon. While the sound is no better, (read the review someone posted on audible) at least you don't have to endure the visual shock of going from a man sitting in tan monochrome clothing to garish graphics that add nothing to the interviews. Also note that they look even worse if you have a large high-def screen.

I own this DVD and one other in the series, "Gateways to the Otherworld" which is 10 times WORSE than this one (see my other review). You may notice that even the reviewers linked to magazines that make their money hawking films like this give relatively low marks to some of the DVD's in this series. Read the low reviews first and if any echo what I've said here, heed their advice. You may also notice as I did (too late) that with one or two exceptions ALL OF THE 4 and 5 star reviewers of Gardiners films appear on ALL of Gardiner's films and for the most part are given low marks by other reviewers. They also don't seem to have much of a review history beyond his films. What does that suggest to you??

Think twice about buying anything with Gardiner's name listed as DIRECTOR.

Also note that Amazon's return policy on CD's and DVD's that are open and found defective is limited to replacement not straight refund.

The problem here appears to be that the Gardiner didn't divide this DVD into enough chapters. I have seen this kind of freezing happen on other DVD's that have few or no chapters. My guess is that your DVD player is using the chapter layout to neatly grab chunks of data and it has a limited buffer for what is waiting to be played. When that chunk is too big it freezes up. If that is the problem you can send this DVD back endlessly and never solve the problem.