"The Best of American Idol Seasons 1-4"

The pinnacle of the successes that took place on "American Idol."

There have been commercials promoting the addition of American Idol first season winner Kelly Clarkson on NBC's singing competition show The Voice. As for the month of March, ABC will relaunch the popular singing competition show itself American Idol (previously aired on FOX). I thought perhaps it's a great time to look through and review one of the rare, yet unwanted, DVDs American Idol has released: a run-through of the best moments from seasons 1 to 4.

I was barely in high school but my parents encouraged I watch and record the episodes of American Idol, despite my reluctant urge to do so. Saying that, it was Season 4 of Idol that I watched and got hooked into, which led me to have an insatiable crush on Mikalah Gordon (I don't have a picture, nor do I think she remembers me, but I did meet Mikalah's cousin Amaya). After I became an overnight fan of the show, I began watching previous seasons all the way back to the first season, and a little bit of the second season. (The second season of Idol saw a plunge in ratings due to the fact they were overshadowed by ABC's sexy competition show Are You Hot?—a competition based on good looks. I wonder how that will fare out today, despite how sensitive our country has gotten about beauty.) The third season of Idol was their best, along with their fourth, so it all fell in place for the producers and for Simon Cowell.

Right away, you'll notice that when you navigate through the menus, you'll run into sub-menus and extra features. This is okay if you're the patient type of viewer wanting to choose which ones you want to watch, but it can be annoying for those who just want to get the feature presentation started.



This DVD was released in 2005 so while this menu may look too simplistic, I'd rather have it look simple than complicated. However, despite the numerous sub-menus, I just go on and select "PLAY ALL" and "PLAY ENTIRE DISC" without being too choosy. If I enjoyed a scene, I can always revert back to it. Play the entire disc and you're looking at over 3 hours of Idol goodness.

The DVD video is 4:3 interlaced, but the menu is 16:9 widescreen. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 (stereo). The producers of Idol didn't inject widescreen high definition until about season 3 and on, but the DVD authors still used the standard definition 4:3 to keep it consistent with the first two seasons. The quality of the video is okay, some shots, like the rare Kelly Clarkson interview saw some crushed colors in the background. Then again, this is all digitized analog video and while the video quality standards are much higher, some visual discrepancies are let off the hook.



Even though this is "the best" of Idol, I thought it was weird that they included some of the funny/awful auditions on some contestants. The point was to emphasize the "reality" of these contestants getting rejected, singing poorly and reacting frivolously to the truth that they can't sing. Fast forward to today, 2018, makes you wonder if these rejected contestants ever feel regret lashing back at the judges for being wrong when they were right the whole time. (A lot of people are stuck in their own personal matrix; In other words, they'll never understand and are the types to avoid the truth. Ego doesn't get you far.)

After all the hilarious auditions, you then are able to lay back and enjoy the audition journeys of the idols that made it far and made it big: Idols such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino, Bo Bice, Ruben Studdard, Diana DeGarmo and Carrie Underwood. You'd think it's just a simple rundown of those top idols, but this DVD shows a whole lot more. What I enjoyed also is the uncut, unedited, raw footage of the auditions, namely Bo Bice and Carrie Underwood. The DVD authors and company kept their promises: you get an exclusive full, uncut look at their whole entire audition and the mini-conversations the potential Idol winners had with the judges that weren't aired on TV.

Along with more rare interviews and performances, Jessica Sierra is included in Paula Abdul's tour interviewing the Top 12 Idol contestants. I mention her name because, 1) she had a handful of run-ins with the law and 2) she released a sex tape that went nowhere. Who knows what she's up to nowadays but imagine having to expose your soul to the Internet taking a gamble at fame only to realize it failed and it's likely to trickle you back to square one—find a job, get an education and so on. All that ruined my perception of her because I thought she was a great singer.

Above all, there isn't any more to be said that hasn't been said about the Idol runner-ups and winners. They sure made their dreams come true, and while some are more popular than others, we still haven't forgotten about them and their hard work to get to where they are/were.

Relive those Idol moments along with exclusive video never-before-seen with this DVD. As previously mentioned, this DVD is so cheap yet unwanted by DVD/Blu-Ray collectors that they're super easily to find. Don't pay more than $10 for this DVD; I got my copy for a measly $2.

Highly recommended!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he managed a personal blog made back in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming (software development) and video production, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, playing old video/DOS games, digital video archiving, and listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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