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| Category | Music | Theatrical Trailer(s) | No |
| Rating |  |
Other Trailer(s) | No |
| Year Released | 1996 | Commentary Tracks | No |
| Running Time | 85:10 minutes | Other Extras | Menu Audio |
| RSDL/Flipper | No/No |
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| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region | 2,3,4,5,6 | Director | Murray Lerner |
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Distributor |
Warner Vision |
Starring | Roger Daltrey
John Entwistle Keith Moon Pete Townshend |
| Case | Super Jewel | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | The Who |
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| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame | MPEG | None |
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | Dolby Digital | None |
| 16x9 Enhancement | No | Soundtrack Languages | English (Linear PCM 48/16 2.0, 1536 Kb/s) |
| Theatrical Aspect Ratio | Full Frame |
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| Macrovision | Yes | Smoking | Yes |
| Subtitles | None | Annoying Product Placement | No |
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, after credits | ||
The selection of songs from that little morning gig almost dead on thirty years ago is:
The transfer is presented in Full Frame format and is of course not 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer displays just about every flaw that a concert video can display. Lack of detail, lack of clarity, plenty of grain, lack of decent shadow detail (you really cannot ignore the fact that at times nearly all of Pete Townshend's head is lost in the night), loss of focus, extreme concert lighting washing out the colours, undersaturation of colours, oversaturation of colours - is there anything I might have forgotten here? Oh, low level noise was not much of an issue here. Despite all that, this has probably never looked as good as it does here, and nothing can be done about sub-standard thirty year old source material. It is transferred as well as we could expect short of inventing time travel.
You may have gathered that there is a degree of inconsistency in the video transfer as far as colours are concerned. At times they are very good, at times they are very rich in tone and at others they are sadly lacking in any sort of tone. Did it really bother me? Not in the slightest.
There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There are no apparent film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. There are plenty of film artefacts in the transfer, but what would you expect from a thirty year old film?
From a purely technical point of view, this is a less than decent video transfer but that is really all due to problems inherent in the source material. Beyond that, does it really make that much difference here? After all, you can at least see the show and at the end of the day the music is the important thing - and what music it is!
The vocals were generally clear and easy to understand throughout the soundtrack.
There did not appear to be any problems with audio sync in the transfer.
There really is not much wrong with the soundtrack, and it really presents well when you screw the volume control up somewhat and just blast the neighbours out with a real rock and roll blast. You can forget the surround channels and the bass channel here. What we get is very much CD-style sound that gloriously captures The Who in full flight. I guess the only complaint here is why we did not get a Dolby Digital 5.1 remaster, or even better a DTS 5.1 soundtrack. Now that would be worth hearing!
A good video transfer of some inadequate source material.
A good audio transfer.
A disappointingly missing-in-action extras package.
| Video |   |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
© Ian Morris (have a
laugh, check out the bio)
29th July 2000
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| DVD | Pioneer DV-515; S-video output |
| Display | Sony Trinitron Wega 84cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in |
| Amplification | Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials. |
| Speakers | Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL |