'Queen Rock Montreal' - High-Def Digest review

[jed]

Kenneth's review of 'Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid' is up. He says this HD DVD is an easy recommend for any Queen fan, boasting an outstanding remastered video transfer, faithful LPCM and DTS HD audio tracks, and a great collection of supplements.

Full review here:
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1045/...smontreal.html

[joeymac]

I'm so getting this when I can next get to town..

Since the Live Aid presentation includes remixed LPCM and DTS HD audio tracks, I'm curious as to why the video wasn't remastered as well.

Live Aid was shot/broadcast by the BBC. Since it was beamed around the world in real-time it simply wasn't possible for it to be on film. So the greatest Rock performance ever is sadly only on available in PAL quality video.
BBC did a top notch job on the audio though... I think I heard on some TV program that the Philly part of Live Aid sounds crap.

[Devil N]

Originally Posted by joeymac

Live Aid was shot/broadcast by the BBC. Since it was beamed around the world in real-time it simply wasn't possible for it to be on film. So the greatest Rock performance ever is sadly only on available in PAL quality video.

Exactly. The video for Live Aid was already remastered for its recent DVD release, and this is as good as Live Aid will ever look.

Also:

it features a band at the peak of its career, and an audience at the height of their fandom.

Actually, this show is notorious for its lack of audience participation. You can see Freddie trying really hard to get the audience to sing along, but what worked to great effect on other concerts such as Live Aid and Live At Wembley, just falls flat here. It happened only rarely that Queen's audience was so dull, but unfortunately it happened during one of their few performances to be captured on film.

Nevertheless, Queen Rock Montreal is still a very entertaining piece of music history, now with marvelous HD visuals and audio, and the inclusion of Queen's Live Aid performance more than makes up for whatever flaws the main concert has.

[RichGardner]

I picked this up at Best Buy right before Christmas. This is a great show!

[StarkyLuv]

I've been a Queen fan all my life since the late 70's when I first heard them on a R&B station and thought they were black!

I'm definitely getting this one.

[jroadley]

The UK HD-DVD doesn't play on some Toshiba players. Word is, there is a firmware update coming in Feb to sort. Not sure if the problem exists on the US version.

I have a US Tosh HD-A35 and it don't play

[tekmobile]

Originally Posted by jroadley

The UK HD-DVD doesn't play on some Toshiba players. Word is, there is a firmware update coming in Feb to sort. Not sure if the problem exists on the US version.

I have a US Tosh HD-A35 and it don't play

What error messages do you get or is it something to do with it being PAL therefore a 25fps encode

just curious not really a huge fan of them but still might pick it up yet

[RichGardner]

I have the US version, and an A2. Play is flawless.

[pentatonic]

Originally Posted by Devil N

Actually, this show is notorious for its lack of audience participation. You can see Freddie trying really hard to get the audience to sing along, but what worked to great effect on other concerts such as Live Aid and Live At Wembley, just falls flat here. It happened only rarely that Queen's audience was so dull, but unfortunately it happened during one of their few performances to be captured on film.

This is true as I was there, and damned did Freddie try hard to get the crowd going, and Queen was soooo big in Montreal too. I remember Freddie commenting on it and also on the fact that the old Forum wasn't full to the rafters. Let me tell you that the next year when they came back, now that show would of been a real treat, the crowd just went nuts from begining to end.

[Peter Galbavy]

Originally Posted by jroadley

The UK HD-DVD doesn't play on some Toshiba players. Word is, there is a firmware update coming in Feb to sort. Not sure if the problem exists on the US version.

I have a US Tosh HD-A35 and it don't play

Could this be the first 50i/25p release ? Perhaps the Live Aid footage is presented unchanged as 50Hz PAL ?