Scubaology.com recently asked Dave Kaufman noted author and editor of Techlife to do our first unboxing. (For those uninitiated, an unboxing is the literal opening and experimenting of a product with photos and descriptions.) Enjoy. 

Diver Al comments are at the end of Dave’s review.
The Living Aquarium II DVD Screensaver arrived at the Scubaology.com offices…

…pretty standard, in the brown box.

So we opened it! Impressive cover.

It would have been nice to have an inside liner notes, but hey we weren’t reviewing the liner, let’s pop it in.

Screen Dreams, makes a wide variety of DVD Screenscapes, a screensaver for your flatpanel (or regular old tv.)

The main menu was beautifully and richly detailed. But being the techie, we always need to check out the extras first.

The DVD Hints section was really a bit lame. I would have liked to see this beefed up a bit with maybe some “easy” easter eggs. This was mostly marketing fluff and letting a user know their options.

The DVD consists of 12 scenes and they are each uniquely composed. Some are tranquil scenes such as this coral fest. Others are unique “fishcams” where the camera appears to be on the back of a fish and follows the fish’s journey around the tank.

While this one appears to be a camera on tripod in front of a tank, the art of this disk is that in reality this viewer’s trained eye would guess *possible spoiler alert* that all these fish were each on their own layer in the editing software and could be then dropped into the tank scenes as needed. It adds an element of dimension and clarity to each item. Very unique.

Some shots were taken at an angle to show off the clarity of viewing, but all were taken with an older Canon Powershot S410.

Each looping scene had a variety of sparse to complex imagery lasting 7-8 minutes. Plenty of time to let your mind peacefully forget what it had just seen.

By far this non-diver’s favorite scene is very Matrix looking, reminding me of the movie posters and the zen buddha like feel of many parts of the movie. Check out Neo and Morpheus in the dojo. Ok, that’s just what I named the main white fish and gold fish.

Diver Al (not a techie) was very impressed with the coral scenes.  Very life like and easy to watch.  Similar to being down in the Pacific around Micronesia. 

Full Disclosure: Scubaology and Techlife did not pay for this review copy nor were we paid to review it. We review products of all types, please contact us via: allan [at] scubaology [dot] com if you have a product you would like reviewed.

This is a great review and I’d like to clarify one of the reviewer’s comments regarding the fish being computer animated. I produced this DVD and all the scenes on the DVD were produced in “live action” and nothing on this DVD is computer animated (CGI). Real fish. Real coral. Real tanks. No computer animation. It is all real. Thanks!

Stephen Spivak
President
Screen Dreams DVD

Posted on February 12th, 2007.

Dave - Although I can’t releave all my secrets
I’m happy to tell you and your readers that the DVD was filmed with a Panasonic Varicam and shot in 720p (Progressive) at 60 frames per second.

Thanks again for the review.
Stephen Spivak
President
Screen Dreams DVD

Posted on February 16th, 2007.

[...] Living Marine Aquarium DVD recently reviewed by scubaology.com Filmed in vivid HD widescreen format, this DVD transforms your turned-off TV into vibrant scenescapes of brilliant aquariums filled with exotic marine life that enhance your mood and ambient TV viewing experience.  Relax to modern fish tanks designed for all TVs, especially flat-panel HDTVs. Loop each scene continuously and show-off that new TV with the latest version of Screen Dreams most popular DVD. Posted in the Aquariums, Enthusiasts, Non-Divers, Tech News category. [...]

Posted on May 1st, 2007.

[...]  What are you doing for earth day and earth week?  Work or home, let us and other readers know.  As an added incentive, we will ramdomly select 1 reader’s comment and send that person a DVD Screensaver, Living Marine Aquarium filmed in HD widescreen. [...]

Posted on April 19th, 2008.