Customer Reviews:
  The best (so far) of a flawed series April 16, 2008
This entire series has historically suffered from the same recurring problems: 1. Coverage of anything but the LMP1 class is sparse. 2. The commentator sounds bored -- but he's really just British. 3. The first two features on the DVD are almost the exact same footage and exact same interviews, just narrated by a different person! 4. While the race coverage itself is "ok," the preview features (test weekend, etc.) are terribly disorganized and difficult to watch. Previous years' offerings never let cameras linger on any one car for more than 3-6 seconds, so you never got a really good look at any of the cars or a good sense of being "with" any one team. Meanwhile, the narrator said short, uninteresting things like, "there's the Panoz car, always a fan favorite and very, very loud on track..." but by the time he's to the word "favorite," the video is already showing some OTHER car, which he then has to try to catch up, saying something like, "the Porsches... always strong in GT," and then he moves on (God forbid he should cover some GT class). Well, the 2006 edition is the best of the series so far (including the 2007 release), giving more stable, organized coverage of the major teams in preview to the race, trimming back repetition, lengthening shots of the cars, and best of all, increasing the coverage of the GT classes; though it was an odd disappointment that the most interesting feature of 2006's GT field -- the addition of Saleen and Lamborghini -- received a bare mention and virtually no video. Granted, the marques didn't figure into the race much, but the charm of GT class is watching "real" cars race, so fans want to see those "ownable" (yeah, right) exotics run! This DVD is still far from perfect; but it is an improvement over the previous offerings and better (unfortunately) than the 2007 edition. And -- if you've an interest in Le Mans -- it's the only choice you have, innit?
Le Mans 2006 January 17, 2007
This DVD is from a new production company and is not as good as the 2005 Le Mans review DVD. However, it does keep to the same format of showing the prerace activities and a good recap of qualifying. Well worth it if you enjoy sports car racing.
 The best January 10, 2007
For anyone who enjoys motor racing.See it for your self .Documenting in satisfactory detail the news, events and people of the 2006 24 hour of le mans, this DVD is a must-have for any endurance race aficionado.
 A definite step backwards December 16, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
While the 2006 Le Mans DVD is similar to previous incarnations, the extremely poor video quality due to a large amount of distortion and pixelation, definitely makes this the worst of the Le Mans DVDs.
Content-wise it's the same stuff: Plenty of testing and qualifying highlights with a little more than an hour devoted to the actual race itself. However, the poor picture quality makes this DVD seem almost like a VHS tape. The distortion and pixelation, at times, is hideous and it really draws away from the pleasure of watching the race. If you compare this DVD side-by-side with Le Mans DVDs covering the 2002 and 2003 races, the 2006 edition is definitely worse.
Another complaint is that the DVD covers testing and qualifying highlights twice -- adding plenty of repetition to the DVD's 140-minute run time. This has been an ongoing habit for the producers of this series, who crammed in this highlight show that originally aired on SPEED channel prior to its live Le Mans race coverage. This preview show, which takes a little more than an hour to cover testing and qualifying, leads into the real start of the DVD, which then goes right back into more testing and qualifying highlights.
The lack of special features and in-car cameras is another disappointment. In the 2005 DVD, the producers included special feature in-car cameras for the first time (even though the DVD had some slight pixelation problems). In the 2006 version, there are no special features and the in-car camera footage is no more than a couple of seconds for each car it shows. It would have been great if there was a full, in-car lap onboard the Audi R10 Turbo Diesel.
Overall, I would still recommend this DVD to any avid Le Mans fan since it is the best record of a race which saw Audi triumph with a diesel-engined car for the first time in the race's 74-year history. It also does a good job showing all of the race action and all of the drama and glamour that makes up the annual festival of endurance on the Circuit de la Sarthe. It's just disappointing that the picture quality is so poor.
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