Bonus DVDs that come "FREE" with CDs. Write your reviews here & value for money marks (1 Viewer)

[Johnny G]

I've managed to get a bonus DVD with quite a lot of CDs recently & even though you can't exactly call them free as they usually cost anything up to 30% more than the regular CD, I think some can be really good value for money.

I must have about 20 by now so I thought it would be good to spend time going through them & writing a review every few days and hope that other will join in so we can take advantage of recommendations & maybe buy a few.

It may be a good idea to ask for reviews of some that you're interested in but are undecided, I have quite a few in my Amazon wish list but I'll go into that later.

After a description of what's on the disc, a score out of 10 will show how good value it is with high scores such as 9 or 10 being reserved discs that you feel you would have spent money on as a seperate DVD release.

I'll start the ball rolling with a disc that spurned me to start this thread as the disc made me think I've paid for actual DVD releases with less programming so here goes:-

3 DOORS DOWN - AWAY FROM THE SUN

THE VIDEOS

Unfortunately there are no videos for singles from this album but I suppose that's because they hadn't made any when the album was released but what is good is that there are 4 videos for the singles released from the previous album, Kryptonite, oser, Duck & Run and Be Like That.

All have good picture transfers (4:3) and a good level of audio quality (stereo).

There is also a montage of live performances with studio recordings dubbed over them.

TEH MAKING OF AWAY FROM THE SUN

This takes the form of interviews & TV appearances with the band and seperate interviews with individual members talking about how the band formed & their time together to date (exact time unknown but approx a quarter hour).

THE MUSIC

Here you get both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS mixes of 2 tracks, Dangerous Game and When I'm Gone, which was released as a single and sounds awesome in DTS.

Overall this DVD is excellent value and I would give it a mark of 8 out of 10 and would recommend this to anyone who likes their rock music, slightly mellow as it is.

 

[Andrew Chong]

Moby 18 B-Sides + DVD
The DVD includes a complete (near as I can tell) performance at England's Glastonbury Festival in surround sound (a great presentation and performance by Moby et. al. by the way); a handful of videos from 18 including We Are All Made of Stars which has received a lot of play on various music channels; a large collection of alternate audio-only music mixes and bonus songs; personally filmed bits by Moby including stuff taken while on tour, quirky, humourous pieces, and a little how-to studio session demonstrating a little of how he puts together a basic track; a nice audio-only megamix; photos taken by Moby; slick menus. Lots of good to great content throughout.

Moby 18 DVD + Bonus CD would be a more accurate title for this set.

A definite 10 out of 10.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

We usually discuss titles like this in the Music area.

 

[Johnny G]

Michael,

I thought it more approprite to but in the Home Theter software area as that's where it is viewed as it's not just music content.

In fact the Documentary is appropriate as that's what most bonus DVDs have on them, usually a feature documenting the band or artist.

I never visit the music area as it seems to be more for discussing the music itself or the new formats that carry music only.

I hope this thread is left where it is because I'm sure most people that buy DVDs have the odd music DVD in their collection and this may help them to kill 2 birds with one stone by recommending a CD to go along with a good value DVD.

Andrew,

Moby wouldn't have been top of my list but a full concert AND videos plus all that other stuff has just moved him up the list.

 

[PeterSOB]

Neil Young's "Greendale" CD contains a pretty nifty DVD that contains a solo concert in which he performs an acoustic version of the entire album. Since the songs are connected to tell one complete story, Young also explains the storyline between the songs (which is occasionally helpful since some of the meanings are a tad muddled).

 

[ChrisBEA]

A couple that I liked are:
Pantera's Greatest Hits: has a disk with all of their videos on it totaling about an hour.
Rob Zombie's Past Present and Future: also a collection of their videos dating back to the White Zombie Days' ~40 minutes
Metallica St.Anger: has a recording of them playing the entire album live in the studio. ~75 minutes
Primus Animals SHould not try to act like people: an EP CD with a DVD containing all of their videos plus live material and a career retrospective. ~180 minutes.

These are all very cool disks.

 

[Scott Leopold]

The Rat Pack CD with the bonus DVD is great! It features the only recorded performance of the guys together in their prime. Johnny Carson filled in for Joey Bishop. The show is great, IMO. The directing is pretty awful, though, missing what seems to be some key action. If you're a fan of the Rat Pack, this is a must buy. There are a couple of shots that show just how much Frank was the leader of the group (he seems to be able to put everyone in their place with just a glance). I've watched it twice now, and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite DVD's.

 

[Jon B NY]

I love it when DVD's w/ videos come with cds! The Stroakes have one (I believe). I personally have the new Queens of the Stone Age cd that came w/ a DVD. No music videos though. Just concert footage. grrrr. At least Dave Ghrol was in it ! Awesome thread idea!

 

[Dean Kousoulas]

Linkin Park: Live in Texas - Comes with the concert on DVD as well. Great concert and cd as well!

Lil' Jon & The Eastside Boyz: Part II - Comes with a DVD with about 6 music videos, and a 20 minute featurette which pretty much follows Lil' Jon around NY.

50 Cent: Get Rich or Die Trying - Interview and music videos of 50 Cent.

Youngbloodz: Drinkin Partners - Bunch of music videos

 

[Johnny G]

I didn't realise the Linkin Park had the whole concert on DVD, I might have to borrow that from my cousin.

Is it in Dolby 5.1?

 

[chris_clem]

Let's see:

Metallica's St.Anger has the whole album played live so I'd give that a 10/10 for value for money and content.

Tori Amos' Hits collection has just a few songs played live, some pictures and lyrics so I'd give it a 6/10.

Coldplay has an excellent live dvd/cd combo with DTS and DD and it's easily worth the extra dough you'd have to pay for getting the combo. 10/10 again.

Incubus: A Murder of Crows. Just bought this, haven't gotten around to watching it yet....

I think these DVD extras are a direct result of the music industry giving the consumers more value for their money due to the advent of file sharing (*cough* Metallica *cough*). IMO, they would never be giving content like this for free had they not been quaking in fear of Napster and Kazaa affecting their bottom line. I predict more "free" DVDs with even better content in the near future.

 

[Topher]

BNL's latest Everything to Everyone has a special edition that contains a DVD of them doing an acoustic set, I think about 10 songs.

 

[Bill Williams]

A movie-related DVD that came with the CD that I enjoyed was the recent limited edition version of the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It comes in both the limited edition and Internet-only limited edition packages (not in the standard CD of the score).

Total running time: app. 40 minutes
Sound: English Dolby Digital 2.0

It's got one main menu in which to select from the LOTR "supertrailer", the featurette "Howard Shore: An Introspective", a photo gallery of Howard Shore, lyrics to the songs that appear in ROTK (in both English and Elvish), and the exclusive Annie Lennox song that does not appear on the CD soundtrack (I forget the name right off-hand).

Having this DVD just for the "supertrailer" and the Howard Shore featurette more than makes up for everything. It's great to see the "supertrailer", with the footage from the trilogy in one condensed format, and it serves as a good mini-sampler for newcomers to the trilogy as well as for the fans. The only thing I didn't like was that it started off with the ROTK logo instead of the more basic LOTR logo (which ends the "supertrailer"), but the selection of scenes is good.

The featurette "Howard Shore: An Introspective" is really great, because it gives viewers a glimpse into the scoring process of the film. It also shows Shore and opera soloist Renee Fleming communicating via Polycom connection between New York and London on her parts for the score. There's also a little bit of Peter Jackson's big "solo" drum part during the scoring process. It's a nice tie-in to what we've seen on the FOTR and TTT EE DVDs to date.

Having the lyrics to the songs in both English and Elvish are also a nice little touch for the really die-hard fans of the saga.

When choosing each of the selections, you can view them individually via the main menu, or you can play them all straight through via the "play all" feature. However, if you choose a particular feature somewhere during the disc, it will default to the "play all" format, as the next feature will come up automatically on screen instead of going back to the main menu. That's the one real caveat to the DVD, so if you want to skip around through the different features, you'll have to hit the "menu" button on your remote to return to the main menu.

It'll make for a nice companion disc to the 2-disc and 4-disc ROTK DVDs that will come out later this year.