The Beatles: 1 (Blu-ray Audio/Video) (1 Viewer)

[Brian Kidd]

Sure. This page lists the full contents. Just scroll down a bit.


http://wogew.blogspot.com/2015/09/beatles-1-mystery-solved.html

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Got the 1+ set in the mail yesterday.


Listened to the CD on the way to work.


I have an excellent Revel sound system in my vehicle.


I was just not impressed. I don't know what I was looking for, but I thought it sounded kind of plain.

 

[MacTex]

It isn't so much that they can't be heard, they just blend in to the rest of the instruments more than they should. All of the instruments are given equal emphasis instead of giving prominence to some over others, like in the original mixes. I noticed the same thing with the backing vocals on Help! In that case, the backing vocals are a counterpoint to the lead vocal and, therefore, should be prominent in the mix. They aren't and are somewhat absorbed into everything else.

I agree with Brian on this. I've A/B'd songs from the new CD release against a number of different sources and the general impression is that on a number of songs, specially the first third of the CD, vocals and instrumentation were given the same weight. Double-tracking was spread but backing vocals were placed in the same sonic position as the lead. This seemed to remove some of the dynamic range and "life" from the sound on those tracks.


For me, from about track 16 on the songs fared better in comparison. There were instances of more "fullness" and sharper, cleaner vocals and instrumentation (noticed more on the later songs) and I would pick some of the new mixes to include in my own playlist over the previously available mixes of those songs.

 

[bigshot]

I watched the first blu-ray last night. I'm thoroughly happy with the image and sound quality, and there were a lot of things I had never seen before that were great. My only quibble is related to the mastering of the disk. The animated title cards between songs look like someone's kid made them in Flash. They are awful. And the disk jerks from one frame rate to another so fast and so often, my projector started having HDMI handshaking problems before a few of the songs. I wish they had ditched the title cards and just put a few seconds of black at the same frame rate as the program at the heads.

 

[AshJW]

Grrr, my set was on the way Thursday and I didn't get it yesterday.


And because I'm on a advanced training course next week, I have to wait a whole week + an extra weekend, 'cause I used the address of my office as delivery address.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Has anyone outside of the U.S. received their pre-orders for the 2 Blu-ray + 1 CD version?


CHEERS!

 

[Douglas_H]

Just my opinion but, I can't imagine anyone not buying the deluxe version of this.

I agree with bigshot, the title cards one BD-1 are bad but are very much better on BD-2.

Strange that.

The consensus on Hoffman and QQ are surprisingly negative.

The Hoffman thing doesn't surprise me because there is a lot of ignorance there about video\film and to a somewhat lesser extent about surround music.

The dissatisfaction on QQ is related to what most are calling a very disappointing 5.1 mix as in not a lot of surround content.

They do know surround there as one would expect so I need to listen to the 5.1 tonight to get my own take.

I watched\listened to both BDs last night and thought it was very good.

The BDs are LPCM 24/96 stereo and DTS-MA 5.1 24/96.

Surely some variability on some of the early tracks but overall it was nice to hear the horrible original "stereo" tracks properly mixed.

Unsure how many here know this but the effort in mixing the recordings through Sgt Pepper was all geared to mono playback.

The stereo versions were mostly after thoughts with all of the instruments in one channel and the vocals in the other.

Total crap.

Anyway I like it.

YMMV

 

[Douglas_H]

Has anyone outside of the U.S. received their pre-orders for the 2 Blu-ray + 1 CD version?


CHEERS!

It appears that Canadian customers have not received their orders from Amazon CA yet.

Sorry.

Trust me I'm not anti-Canadian in fact I love visiting B.C and Victoria and the people but Amazon CA in my experience sucks at least for shipments and shipping to Washington state.

I get far faster service from Amazon UK when I order from them.

 

[Tony Bensley]

It appears that Canadian customers have not received their orders from Amazon CA yet.

Sorry.

Trust me I'm not anti-Canadian in fact I love visiting B.C and Victoria and the people but Amazon CA in my experience sucks at least for shipments and shipping to Washington state.

I get far faster service from Amazon UK when I order from them.

Hi Douglas!


No worries!


Truth be told, I'm fairly P.O.'d over the outrageous pricing on Amazon.ca, coupled with the general lack of availability of the deluxe set anywhere in Canada. If they're going to have the cheek to charge so bloody much for the 2 Blu-ray + 1 CD set, then at least they should be shipping out on the day of release instead of this stupid a** "Temporarily Out Of Stock" B.S! I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Amazon Canada pulls the delayed release date stunt on this one!


Sorry about my rant, but the B.S. that's been going down in Canada with the deluxe set has been rather frustrating!


CHEERS!


Tony

 

[bigshot]

It's important to realize that many of these videos were recorded with canned playback of the backing track and live vocals... mixed together live on the fly to suit tiny speakers in a TV set. Syncing that up to the original studio masters, isolating the vocals and dealing with inevitable phase issues from drifting sync would be a huge task. But they pulled it off perfectly.


In the past, the only way to hear the early music would be in bizarre split ping pong stereo or balanced, but admittedly flat mono... or even worse, the crappy sound quality broadcast with these videos originally. To hear the early songs in full sounding stereo WITH the live elements from the film integrated perfectly is a huge thing.


By the time it gets to the later material where more tracks to work with, the 5.1 is very good. I thought the rooftop video sounded fantastic. No complaints about sound quality from me. This is the best this stuff has ever sounded.


Also, I don't understand the complaints about lip sync. It's clear that when Paul or John felt they couldn't recreate the studio vocals on the live vocal track, they just goofed around and let the recorded track cover it. They didn't even pretend to fake it. That was deliberate and isn't an error on the part of the people producing the blu-ray.


The price of the plus set isn't at all outrageous. It's three hours of material plus a CD. That's like packaging Hard Day's Night and Help! together and giving you the soundtrack CDs too.

 

[Douglas_H]

It's important to realize that many of these videos were recorded with canned playback of the backing track and live vocals... mixed together live on the fly to suit tiny speakers in a TV set. Syncing that up to the original studio masters, isolating the vocals and dealing with inevitable phase issues from drifting sync would be a huge task. But they pulled it off perfectly.


In the past, the only way to hear the early music would be in bizarre split ping pong stereo or balanced, but admittedly flat mono... or even worse, the crappy sound quality broadcast with these videos originally. To hear the early songs in full sounding stereo WITH the live elements from the film integrated perfectly is a huge thing.


By the time it gets to the later material where more tracks to work with, the 5.1 is very good. I thought the rooftop video sounded fantastic. No complaints about sound quality from me. This is the best this stuff has ever sounded.

I agree with everything you said except one, I love the mono Beatles

Big, you know how many internet expert, texperts there are, right?

Most all of them are on SHF.

 

[bigshot]

I have the mono box and love it. But at that point, the choice was mono or ping pong. That decision is a no-brainer. But if you go back into the masters and start creating true stereo mixes that are well balanced, I might choose different.


Beatles fans are among the most anal retentive folks in existence. I know all about that. Armchair scholars reciting trivia they got out of some wikipedia article somewhere. I'm not that kind of fan, but I've been following them since I saw them on Ed Sullivan, and there's a bunch of stuff here that I didn't even know existed.

 

[turtledove]

The book mentions frame rate differences. Surely they've not included UK 25fps content on the discs? Unplayable for most in the US

 

[Moore Maxx]

Just picked up my 1 cd/2 blu ray at Best Buy. Did not see anything on the floor so had to ask the sales person where it was. He said they keep them in the back and won't be putting them out on the floor. WOW!! Anyway with the $5 dollars off and a $5 dollar coupon I glad to add this to the collection. Will check it out later tonight.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Sure. This page lists the full contents. Just scroll down a bit.


http://wogew.blogspo...ery-solved.html

Thanks- no Strawberry Fields Forever on the single disc, that one is essential! Just wish I could get it at an actual store, will probably wait for a big sale if I have to order it.

 

[Brian Kidd]

The book mentions frame rate differences. Surely they've not included UK 25fps content on the discs? Unplayable for most in the US

It changes back and forth from 24fps to 29.97fps. What is disappointing is that some of the film-based material is presented in 29.97fps 1080i, likely because it was an old HD master they already had and they didn't bother to do a better 24fps 1080p transfer. I don't know. Maybe those were transfers made for the Anthology and they just reused them. Those clips still look better than I've ever seen them. They're just not the correct framerate and are of a slightly lesser quality than, say, the clip for Strawberry Fields Forever which looks unbelievably great. If their source was film, then it should have been presented at the correct framerate and 1080p. Apple, for one reason or another, didn't do that on several of the film-based clips.


I also agree about the intro animations. They're garbage. Don't get me started on the Come Together video that looks like it was created as a school project. That was awful when it was just a Flash animation for the "1" website back in 2000.


As for the new stereo mixes being better than the early vocals on one side/instruments on the other, well, yeah. However, only the very early songs and albums had that issue. The remixes that George Martin did for Help! and Rubber Soul for the 1987 CD release sound great as do the original stereo mixes for Revolver on through Abbey Road. Yes, I know that the Beatles themselves spent the majority of their time up until The White Album concerned with the mono mixes. The mono mix on Sgt. Pepper is its own animal and has great aspects that aren't carried over to the stereo mix. That doesn't negate the quality of the original stereo mixes of the period between Revolver and The White Album. George Martin, Geoff Emerick, etc. were super-talented and knew what they were doing. The new stereo mixes are fine. They're not the worst thing ever. I just find them very generic and lacking the quality of most of the original stereo mixes I mentioned previously. There are also instances where I feel like mistakes were made. If you're going to bother to go back to the original tapes and do new mixes, they should at least improve upon what came before. I really feel like these don't. Say what you will about the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, in many ways the remixes let you hear those songs in a new way that was entirely different from what had come before but didn't lessen the songs the way I feel these new stereo mixes often do. It's just an opinion and I'm perfectly happy that others' opinions may differ. That's one of the things I've always loved about the HTF. We're passionate and not afraid to voice our opinions, but we also tend to be gracious when others don't feel the same way.


As for the set as a whole, I'm glad I have the clips. All but a few are amazing. If you're a big Beatles fan, by all means get the deluxe set as there are some clips on the second video disc that are essential. The first disc is severely Paul-heavy. I love McCartney, but Lennon was an equal when it came to his genius and talent. The second disc makes up for that with the inclusion of Strawberry Fields Forever, Rain, A Day in the Life, and the searing version of Revolution. Also, the more l listen to the new mix of Real Love, the more I wish I had it to listen to outside of the Blu-ray. Going to have to find a way to fix that. I stand by my opinion that the deluxe set is overpriced in comparison to other music-related discs out there. I also wish there was more in the way of supplemental video features that go into the history and importance of the promo clips, but that's a minor quibble as the book does go into that quite a bit. All that being said, however, as a Beatle fan I'm glad I have the deluxe set and would recommend it to other Beatle fans. It's just not up to the quality that I had hoped it would be and that, honestly, I feel it could be.

 

[Dee Zee]

I watched the first blu-ray last night. I'm thoroughly happy with the image and sound quality, and there were a lot of things I had never seen before that were great. My only quibble is related to the mastering of the disk. The animated title cards between songs look like someone's kid made them in Flash. They are awful. And the disk jerks from one frame rate to another so fast and so often, my projector started having HDMI handshaking problems before a few of the songs. I wish they had ditched the title cards and just put a few seconds of black at the same frame rate as the program at the heads.

I love the title cards, very whimsical and made me smile. I'm enjoying the set for what it is, not what it isn't. Too much thinking can suck the joy out of such things Fab.

 

[davidmatychuk]

New Beatles product in 2015 of unprecedented quality: I think I'll enjoy the moment. How many more will there ever be?

 

[ToEhrIsHuman]

I believe the filmed content presented in 1080i was originally filmed at 25fps. Either you repeat a frame every 5 or you lose a frame every second - that's your choice shoehorning 25fps into 1080i or 1080p24. Unfortunately many monitors around the world do not support native 1080p25 source material.


Your other choice would be to slow the audio slightly, thereby altering the pitch as well, to sync 25fps content played back at 24 (and as The Beatles are primarily known and celebrated for their audio output, this would presumably have been the most offensive of available options in order to correct the frame rate discrepancy.)

It changes back and forth from 24fps to 29.97fps. What is disappointing is that some of the film-based material is presented in 29.97fps 1080i, likely because it was an old HD master they already had and they didn't bother to do a better 24fps 1080p transfer. I don't know. Maybe those were transfers made for the Anthology and they just reused them. Those clips still look better than I've ever seen them. They're just not the correct framerate and are of a slightly lesser quality than, say, the clip for Strawberry Fields Forever which looks unbelievably great. If their source was film, then it should have been presented at the correct framerate and 1080p. Apple, for one reason or another, didn't do that on several of the film-based clips.

 

[smithbrad]

I love the title cards, very whimsical and made me smile. I'm enjoying the set for what it is, not what it isn't. Too much thinking can suck the joy out of such things Fab.

I agree. Early on I caught bits and pieces of this thread but quickly stopped when more information started to be revealed then i needed to know. I much prefer to leave the wizard behind the curtain, in this case, and just let my eye and ears run with it without any thought on how it was put together. I only came back to state that I was able to catch 30 minutes of it this evening and thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't wait to finish the set (bought the deluxe version).