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Neil Young to release archive on BluRay disc (1 Viewer)

RDarrylR

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Darryl
Sorry if this is necrothreading but I didn't find any other threads on the Neil Young Archives on Blu-ray.

I so want to get this set but I keep telling myself to wait for some kind of sale.
 

Peter Raber

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I pre-ordered it from Amazon months ago and am supposed to get it today.

I was really looking forward to it until I saw the disc breakdown. When I saw that 2 of the 10 discs Neil had already released earlier with his Performance Series releases I became a bit bummed.

I was able to justify it to myself by saying that they are not on blu-ray in those earlier releases.

Amazon's lowest price I saw was and still is $279.99. Of course when I ordered it it was $323.99, but with Amazon's pre-order guarantee I should get it at the 279 price. If I don't I will raise holy hell.

UPS just arrived as I was writing this and I am going to tear into this set right now.
 

Peter Raber

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Ok I am just now opening up the box and here are my first impressions:

Nice sturdy long rectangular box that opens from the top, put together very well, decorated with old newspaper clipping photos on each side of the box and NEIL YOUNG written in big bold block type going around the entire box.

Looking inside there are four separate sections. In the first is a real nice looking leather bound book, sealed in cellophane, most likely to keep it safe in transport, although the spine binding looks a little suspect.

The second section is thin and houses a long poster of tracks on the discs, which is shown as folders in a filing cabinet. This is the "theme" of the box set. The folders have the listings of all the tracks, one folder for each song. There is a black divider partitioning off each year between the songs.

The third part of the set is the actual box that holds all the individual discs. Its laid out in a rectangle box that is split in the middle. I have a couple of problems with this section of the set for two reasons:

1) The very fact that it is split in the middle. This, in and of itself, brings along its own set of issues. The set fits very snugly in the main box, which, due to the middle split causes the lower half of the disc box to catch on the border surrounding it. It took me about 10 minutes and the use of a thin credit card to push the box in enough to be able to slip it out through the housing. Now, this may not happen to all the sets, but if your box holding the individual discs warps or bends out at all at the split section then you will most likely need to do what I did to get it out.

2) After you finally take out this section you fold the set at the split and are faced with two pull down doors, which I think looks very stylish. The discs are in their own individual paper jewel cases (I forget the technical term), but they are just like you would buy a disc in the store. That's great, but the problem occurs when trying to take them out. They are packed in (5 to each box) VERY tightly, not leaving any wiggle room. I still need to figure out a good way to remove them without damaging the box.

Now, the last section of the box set is a black box with no markings at all. When you take it out things are rattling around in it. When I opened the box I found a few things in there: a Whisky A Go Go sticky note pad (ok, a nice little novelty), the 2 CD set of Neil's recent Performance Series disc "Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 (I guess because his first two releases are duplicated here in this set in Blu-ray format). However, this 2 CD set is just that: CD. It's not Blu-ray, so while it is nice it is included for completeness sake it just stands out from the rest of the set. Finally, and here's the thing that really got me excited: there is a "credit" card with a photo of Neil in one of his cars during the timeframe of this set (63-72). At the bottom of the card it tells you to use this card to download ALL the audio tracks from this set into mp3 format. I LOVE this part.

Obviously, the way to listen to this is in your home system set-up in 5.1 surround sound with the HD sound quality, but from time to time, when doing this is not convenient it is nice to have the option to listen to some of this on your ipod.

Overall, I think this is an excellent set. It is sturdy, has a lot of different elements to it, and will give us a lot of enjoyment. I just wish they thought out the box holding the actual discs a little bit better, did a little more QC testing on it to work out the kinks I mentioned above.

If you are a big-time Neil fan then this is a must purchase. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
 
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Patrick E Hannon
I picked up the Blu-ray set yesterday and have not had a chance to listen much yet, but the 192 / 24 sounds nice so far. The only note of concern, it takes up to 5 minutes to load up a disc (five minutes of the spinning 45 rpm icon!). This using a SONY BDP-S500 with the most recent firmware ( Jan. 09). After successful loading, the Shakey splash screen and then the menu page, hitting enter on the remote will start the the music, so there is no need to turn on a monitor just to listen to music....or so it seems on the couple of discs I tried. To me this is a good point as I hate messing around with video menus just to play music......e.g. DVDA.

Cheers,
P.E.Hannon
 

Peter Raber

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I just looked at it online at Best Buy and the box looks to be the same size as the one I received from Amazon. I don't think Best Buy has any bigger box than anyone else.

The 10 Blu-ray or DVD (depending on which set you bought) disc package needs most of that space lengthwise when it is fully extended.
 

Peter Neski

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I looked at the one on their site ,and its not the big one I saw in the
store,maybe theres one with a T-shirt or something
 

Craig S

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Peter, thanks for the excellent review. I was undecided about this, but you convinced me to pull the trigger at Amazon. Chose the one-day Prime shipping upgrade so I will have it tomorrow to enjoy over the weekend!!
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Gordon McMurphy

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The UK release was delayed by a week, so I should have my set within the next three days. I have the available reviews and it sounds like an audacious, exhaustive and ingenius piece of work. I have been a NY fan since 1998 (I was 18) when I bought Decade for £22 ($35) and never looked back. I have a healthy archive of bootlegs from 1969-2003, have read all the biographies and I take all spoofs and piss-takes of Neil in good spirit. I've been waiting for this set for a long time and I'm amazed that it arrived this year, frankly. I just hope that Volume 2 will arrive within the next two years. That will be the boxed set to end all boxed sets. The quantity and quality of the 1973-1981 material both the released and unreleased recordings and film footage is unapproachable in the history of rock and roll. The unreleased stuff (including the finalized yet mythically unreleased Homegrown album from '75) from 1974-1976 alone is worthy of a lavish box set, but we'll get Time Fades Away material, Tonight's the Night sessions and concerts in HQ audio, the transcendental 1976 Crazy Horse tours of Japan, Europe and America, live material of The Ducks, the May 1978 Boarding House solo stuff (which is dynamite and has 16mm footage) and the Rust Never Sleeps tour. I'll be using my entire year's worth of vactions when Volume 2 comes out, I reckon!

Oh, one thing that disappoints me greatly - the non-mention of Blu-rays of the original albums. Neil really ouught to have released his debut album, Everybody Knows This Nowhere, After the Goldrush and Harvest (which is already on DVDA) on BD in 192/24 individually and as a boxed set. I'm begining to worry that he may now view the Archives as supplanting the original album releases. Any thoughts?
 

RDarrylR

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Darryl
I so want to buy this set. I keep telling myself to wait for at least a 10% or 15% off sale but it's getting harder to hold off as I read more about the set.

My favorite CD of his is likely the Live at Massey Hall 1971 one and i've been listening to that a lot this weekend. I'm curious how much better the Blu-ray version of that disc is going to sound.
 

Peter Raber

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They have an FAQ on the Neil Young site in the archives section and I believe one question is will Neil's albums be released on blu-ray in the future and the answer was yes.
 

Peter Raber

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I can't remember how I found the website, but I went into my history and found the link:

Q&A/FAQ for the NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES Vol. 1

Most of the stuff in the FAQ is straightforward stuff that people using blu-ray already know, but here is the specific Q and A about your concern:

Q- Will Neil's 1968-1972 LPs be released on Blu-ray following NYA1's release?
A- Yes and also as CD and vinyl. In addition they are now available at iTunes in the MP3 format. In each case, these are remastered from the original master tapes
 

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