Rating: 
Summary: A good 5.1 DVD audio & video of the classic Yes line up.
Review: After reading some of the above reviews I wasn't going to buy this DVD. Being a Yes fan, I did anyway and I am pleased that I did. I realized that our amateur reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt. To me the other reviews made the video of "Keys" sound like a "0" on a 1-10 scale. Granted, "Keys" is no George Lucus production, but I found it to be very creative, attractive and enjoyable.I think the video artists did a fine job of creating a video to accompany this concert. I found that most of the effects added to the concept of the music with superimposed water images and Roger Dean album art over the band on parts of Close to the Edge. Yes, there were parts of the video on at least a couple of songs that did not seem befitting, and detracted. There was an occasional imperfect synch of sound and image. There was also the use of a jerky slow motion effect used in a number of places (probably used to fill in gaps) that was less than desirable, but those things represent only a small percent of the total video. So does that make the whole apple bad? Not in my book. You can really see the classic Yes line up perform--up close. As far as sound quality, it is as good as the CDs (which is a great recording compared to the old classic Yes albums), but with the added enhancement of surround sound. The 5.1 is not as well balanced as other discs. On my system, I found that if I decreased the center channel by 4 db and increased the rears by 4 db plus added a 15 ms delay to the rears--it sounded more balanced. I have also listened to the House of Blues 5.1 in the DVD-A version (audio only, no video) from the JVC sampler. This is good and has some real strengths of 5.1 mix separation and clear vocals. The weaknesses are that most of the lead vocals are just on the center channel, the extreme live reverberation in the surround and the drums are not as clear as on "Keys." The DVD-Audio sample of Magnification is great!--one of two BEST recordings/5.1 mixes I have ever heard to date. I've heard 23 DVD-A mixes. In my opinion, I would say "Keys" is a good 5.1 DVD audio/video of the classic Yes line up.
Rating: 
Summary: Come on !! They are better now than then
Review: I have seen YES countless times over the years. this DVD is essential for any YES fan. I cant believe Rick Wakeman, he was never THIS good live. All of them really!!!! Alan White is the premier "rock" drummer today. He has no equal. Chris Squire, Steve Howe....its just amazing how good these guys are. Detractors say they are just going through the motions. Check out an 80's or 90's ELP video or something by Genesis if you want to see a band going through the motions......besides, even Siberia goes through the motions!
Rating: 
Summary: Big let down
Review: I am a huge Yes fan and have all but a few of their albums so this is strictly a review of this DVD, not the band.
First the good: The band was tight and the sound on the DVD is quite good. The songs they played were all great tunes including a few of my most favorite Yes compositions like And You and I, The Revealing Science of God, Going for the One and America.
The bad: The video quality is substandard and grainy. In addition there are numerous places where things are out of sync. But even worse than the video quality are the stupid animations that pop up. Poorly done to say the least, (it's too bad there is no way in the menu to turn them off). For die hard Yes fans like me, I recommend the DVD. For all others buy the Yes - Symphonic Live DVD it is light years ahead of this one.
Rating:
Summary: Hard knocked flaws but major material.
Review: Remember when they released the Keys to Ascension on CD? Did you feel that the sound and performance was so crisp and magnificent? Here we are in the age of wonderful modern technology and Yes is here to participate in it. Rick Wakeman participation is especially gratifying considering his hiatus as a Yesman. Oh how I WISHED they would release it on DVD. So they did, and I must say the first few minutes I was on the edge of my seat loving it. The sound and video quality was excellent. But then i noticed that the parts of some songs where a Yesman displayed his proficiency of his instrument...was cut off by slow motioned videos of trees swaying, clouds drifting, water falling and other psyhchedlia you can think of. Sometimes these moments fit in quite well, but lets face it, theres overkill. There was also some moments when sound and video were out of sync/unison for sake of "exciting video editing tricks." You notice it towards the end of their opening piece, Siberian Khatru. On the live music track, Alan White is hitting his crash cymbal ONCE and the video shows him hitting a crash FOUR times half a second later. I dont like it when ANY live video does that. Remember video and sound were not in sync in the whole Yessongs video? The thing that attracts me to this dvd is the rareness of some of these songs. Yes doesn't really perform Starship Trooper, Turn of the Century, Going for the One, America and especially Revealing Science of God on a daily basis, more or less it being on DVD. You do see Steve Howe's assortment of vintage classics. You can also awe of Alan Whites array of percussion and cymbals. Speaking of array, check out Wakemans rig...theres over ten keyboards folks. And good ol Squire who interestingly uses guitar amps in conjunction with bass amps to acheive his awesome sound. Despite the two blundering aspects which could have made this a gem, the video footage is priceless and worth it, especially if you are a Yes fan. IF anything, you can listen to it as a high quality CD...just put the tv off and save yourself from frustration and high electricty bills. And if you are in the mood to watch it, it will be a good time. I would only hope they would re-release this video re-edited with all the junk cut out. We would be so lucky.
Rating:
Summary: Come on !! They are better now than then
Review: I have seen YES countless times over the years. this DVD is essential for any YES fan. I cant believe Rick Wakeman, he was never THIS good live. All of them really!!!! Alan White is the premier "rock" drummer today. He has no equal. Chris Squire, Steve Howe....its just amazing how good these guys are. Detractors say they are just going through the motions. Check out an 80's or 90's ELP video or something by Genesis if you want to see a band going through the motions......besides, even Siberia goes through the motions!
Rating:
Summary: Good, but could have been better.
Review: As my title suggests, this DVD is pretty good, though it could have been much better.
The music as always is absolutely great, I mean it is yes, right? Though the sound mixing isn't all that spectacular, but I guess it does the job.
But the hurting point of this DVD is, as everyone else as mentioned, its wacky and sometimes stupid animations.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Concert event ruined
Review: I am not sure that I can add much more than has already been said other than to note that a classic turn in the career of Yes was seriously botched on the video production end. Just what, exactly, was on the minds of those responsible for producing this? Why make the decision to chop up each song with a fade out, then a fade in with title? It ruins this DVD as a "concert" experience and takes away any sense of fluidity. What is the deal with the cheesy strobe slow mo effects. Any mid-level portable video camera has this effect and it is stupid and annoying. Yet the director here felt it necessary to use it quite often, like a child with a new toy at Christmas. It's like people who put exclamation points after every sentence! And put more and more of them!!!!!! Like their writing is going to get more exciting through them!!!!!!!!!! And the graphics???? The people hanging off cliffs superimposed during the performance of "Awaken" ruined the atmosphere of the piece entirely. Perhaps they got a director who felt nobody was excited enough with Yes music unless he found whatever imagery he could to "spice" it up. The only other option I could see was that the director and/or producer was so full of himself that he had to say, "Look at me!!!!!!!!!!! Look what I can do!!!!!!!!!!!!" I would much rather watch Yes, thank you. For those people who bought this as their only Yes concert DVD, please don't be discouraged. I think Yes learned the lesson with "Yes: Symphonic Live". They added a feature which allows you to either turn on or off the graphics, a wonderful idea since there just may be someone who really does enjoy the visuals. Plus, there are no annoying video effects. My solution to this one was to take the two "Keys to Ascension" CDs, which include all of this material, and use mixing software to reconstruct the concert and burn it onto two CDs. This was an amazing concert! (Ok, so I did need ONE exclamation point)
Rating: 
Summary: ... and one of those stars is for Chris Squire's boots
Review: I have to concur with the Yes fans who said that this DVD is a long way from the quality it deserves to be. I bought this DVD to rip off riffs from Steve Howe and see what kind of spacesuit Jon Anderson is wearing these days, not having seen Yes in concert since the 90125 tour when their opening act was Bugs Bunny cartoons. I did not buy this DVD to see the equivalent of Homer Simpson learning how to edit home movies with star-wipes. I think the only band member who bothered to stray from the 25-plus-year-old studio versions of these songs was Chris Squire. That doesn't bother me so much because they're all amazing musicians, and for listening purposes, the DVD is fine. But the sound editing was pretty horrible, and the reviewer who said that every time the camera caught somebody in the middle of a jaw-dropping solo run the video editor decided to go into his bag of dumb slo-mo tricks was spot on. It's terribly frustrating to watch from a musician's perspective. I don't have any other Yes DVDs and now I'm a little skittish about looking around for another one. And it's a shame, because now there's a whole generation of young musicians who'll never get to have the experience of a live Yes show. PS: is that a MULLET on Jon Anderson?
Rating:
Summary: What a frustrating experience
Review: I can't work out what this DVD is supposed to be about - is it a live Yes concert recording with stupid visualizations running all over it, or is it a New Age video with Yes members struggling to make their music noticed in amongst the waterfalls and James Bond-like girls on trapezes? On either level, it fails. As a concert recording it is devoid of atmosphere and that special magic that one gets when seeing a show live (and I'm told this WAS a magical experience for those who were there); and as a video it is a bore of hackneyed, abysmal images of anonymous people and objects which have no empathy with the music over which they are rudely plastered. Some producer must have sat down and thought: what can I do which will most cheese off buyers of this DVD; put the audio out of synch with the video, a sure fire hit - to the point of absurdity where you see Rick Wakeman' hand going upscale as the music is going downscale!; just as Steve Howe launches into a dazzling solo, stick a running waterfall video over the top so you can't see his hands at all, but you can imagine it, folks!; but wait, there's more! - fade out annoyingly in between songs and super up the song titles on the screen, so you truly lose that feeling of live ambience and are forced to remember that your place is in the living room, not, heaven forbid, at a live show. Apart from that, the music is lovely, the set list to die for (Revealing Science of God! how amazing that must have been for those who were there and didn't know it was coming, not that you saw their reactions, of course), and all the performers were in top form. Anderson's voice is as pure and sure as ever; Howe, Squire, White and Wakeman dazzle with their virtuosity and all sounds as it should at a Yes concert. Three stars for that alone. My only advice is to listen to this with your eyes shut. It's actually better than watching this travesty of a production.
Rating:
Summary: Can't complain for long...
Review: I could complain... for instance, I'm perplexed a little by the selection of songs. I don't quite understand "Revealing Science of God" as the selection from "-Topographic Oceans", when "The Remembering" has sharper hooks (after all these years if I tried to hum a few bars of "Revealing Science-", I'd still come up blank), or "Onward" and "Turn of the Century" over "Wonderous Stories", and not even a note from "Relayer" (if "House of Yes" can get away with reducing "Ritual" from an whole 21 minutes to a few bars, even a few bars from "Soon" would have been nice here). I think all of "Close to the Edge" is represented here at the expense of being able to fill in the gaps in the scuttled video version of "Yessongs"- no "South Side of the Sky", no "Heart of the Sunrise", no -"Fish"- only "Roundabout" representing the "Fragile" album here. I'm also put off by the same video effects that seem to bother most everyone else, the "jerky cam" effect that seems to hideously transform things into bad lip synching is pretty hard to get over, even after many watchings. But still, overall... holding a grudge against this on account of those gripes would be a little like holding a grudge against Christmas on account of Santa's outlandish taste in apparel and transportation methods. Fact is, a lot of the blended in imagery is a lot like the images that this music has always evoked in my head anyway, and one saving grace of the total video overkill is how frequently it superimposes closeup shots of the individual performers over the scene... and let's face it, getting to see them perform anything from "-Topographic Oceans" here still puts me on the edge of my seat in great joy and near disbelief. It's still wonderful just to have another chance to see another show with them together and in good form and playing these songs, as often as you like on DVD. Rick Wakeman on keys for this is a real treat, too. All in all, I think it's still a truly great addition to the line-up of Yes on video / DVD, quite possibly the best so far. If if you're wondering whether to get this or "House of Yes", or which to get first, get this one.
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