Re: Rush Concerts on DVD coming in 2002
Disappointingly, the image doesn't look very good. It's painfully obvious that they didn't go back to the original elements, using the analog video masters and simply "restored" them as best they could. Which is a shame because, as has been discussed here at the HTF, digital DVD really shows the poor quality of "ported" analog videotape, especially from 80's transfer technology. ESL actually looks like they took an old VHS tape and found the best VHS player they could find and simply transferred it. GUP has the color bleed and noise that is always inherent on analog tape. And ASOH, which I would think (hope) they have the original 35mm film somewhere, looks transferred from, again, analog tape since it has the video "noise" associated with it, which shouldn't happen from a 35mm to digital transfer. (It should be noted that they obviously didn't use the LaserDisc transfer since "Lock & Key" is missing from this release, which begs the question: What was used to do this transfer?) It just doesn't look like any of the "original" elements were used in transferring the image for these releases. If I am mistaken and they were, then whoever did it is an amateur. I've read the image/video is "remastered" and "restored" (it says so in the credits) but I'd love to read somewhere definitively what was used prior to restoration and remastering to transfer the image to DVD, because for modern transferring techniques and technology, it doesn't look very good at all. (I should add that for a monitor, I use a Sony Wega 36" SDTV, which is usually big and vivid enough to expose the inconsistencies of poorly-transferred and authored DVDs. If you have a smaller TV, perhaps the image will look good, if you have a bigger TV or a HDTV and/or projector, I can only imagine how terrible these will look.)
It's confounding when we see movies made in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s transferred to DVD and they look immaculate because they took the time to transfer the original elements to digital and restore/remaster them. And not even thinking of movies, that Zeppelin DVD looks infinitely better than any of these since they painstakingly transferred the original elements, which Jimmy Page had archived, to digital and then restored them frame by frame. None of that "looks" like it was done for these. Oh, well. Perhaps they realize this and that is why 3 DVDs and a CD are priced at approximately $25.
The 5.1 audio sounds great though.
As always, it's difficult to tell which sounds better, the Dolby Digital or the DTS. From a quick comparison, the Dolby Digital appears to have more punch, but this is probably because it's usually louder than DTS, which makes an A/B comparison difficult. Plus I've always found DTS to be a bit softer and warmer, which works great for movies, but sometimes doesn't work so well with live rock concert audio.
So the video is disappointing but the 5.1 audio is really good. Which, in the end, is really what saves this set. (Imagine if the 5.1 audio was as awful as the Rush in Rio release--that would leave this set unwatchable and unlistenable.) How often will I watch it anyway? I'll listen to it as "background" more than I will ever watch it.
