Beatles - Around the World

Rating:
Summary: Good news and bad news--so you know what you are getting.
Review: "Description
A film by Mark Devito and Geoffrey Giulian. Here at last is the ultimate visual and cultural history of the Beatles. Packed with dozens of never before seen film clips, ultra rare photographs and exclusive interviews, John, Paul, George and Ringo come alive in this intelligent, compelling, inside glimpse into the impenetrable inner-circle of the greatest group ever. Included in this all star, international production are not only the Beatle's themselves, but other well known insiders like Lennon Intimates; Frederic Seaman and Yoko Ono. Also lending their exclusive insights are former Beatle Pete Best, The Maharishi and Eric Clapton."

That was the description Amazon had posted when I ordered this DVD (probably still does.) I don't know what DVD that was written about, but it's certainly not this one. That's part of the good news, because I had a guess to what it really was when I ordered it.

Beatles "Around the World" actually contains three sections. First is what seems to be a basically complete version of the "Around the Beatles" TV broadcast from England. The theater sketch along with the music segments from all the artists (Cilla Black, etc.) and The Beatles music segment in pretty good quality (like the medley and Shout among many others.) This is the best quality overall of the 3 sections.

Next is the promo ad for theater showings of the first U.S. Washington D.C. concert program, and then the program straight through until the abrupt cut durring the next to last song. All the stage rotating and banter, along with the music is included. Watchable quality here, but not the newly found tape source that Apple used a part in Anthology.

Third segment is the 1966 Tokyo "light suits" concert. Big surprise is the very poor video quality on this. I have seen this show look almost pristeen, as does the "dark suits" show that was available on Laserdisc from Japan. The audio is acceptable, wish they would have tracked down a much better copy of this show to put out.

Tacked on the end of the disc is a throw away biography and photo gallery. Now some more good news and bad. The case says this is "region 0" not "1" so anyone can use it. The case also says in very small print "PAL." I know this release was originally from Australia, which uses the PAL system, but I figured if it was released as a domestic item here it would be done NTSC. I have two players I can put DVDs in. The first player I tried would not play this disc. I got a couple frozen images then the disc would just hang and do nothing. The menu was one of the images, but without the controls to navigate it. Weirder part is, this is my region-free all-code player that is also supposed to handle PAL discs. My Pioneer combo Laserdisc/DVD unit played this disc fine. As far as I know, it is not supposed to handle PAL discs. Is the case wrong and the disc is actually NTSC? Or is this disc PAL like the case says and I'm lucky one of my players can handle it? Be warned, it could go either way for you too.

Rare concert material here all in one place, could have used better source tapes. Moot points if you can't get it to play at all.

Rating:
Summary: Good news and bad news--so you know what you are getting.
Review: "Description
A film by Mark Devito and Geoffrey Giulian. Here at last is the ultimate visual and cultural history of the Beatles. Packed with dozens of never before seen film clips, ultra rare photographs and exclusive interviews, John, Paul, George and Ringo come alive in this intelligent, compelling, inside glimpse into the impenetrable inner-circle of the greatest group ever. Included in this all star, international production are not only the Beatle's themselves, but other well known insiders like Lennon Intimates; Frederic Seaman and Yoko Ono. Also lending their exclusive insights are former Beatle Pete Best, The Maharishi and Eric Clapton."

That was the description Amazon had posted when I ordered this DVD (probably still does.) I don't know what DVD that was written about, but it's certainly not this one. That's part of the good news, because I had a guess to what it really was when I ordered it.

Beatles "Around the World" actually contains three sections. First is what seems to be a basically complete version of the "Around the Beatles" TV broadcast from England. The theater sketch along with the music segments from all the artists (Cilla Black, etc.) and The Beatles music segment in pretty good quality (like the medley and Shout among many others.) This is the best quality overall of the 3 sections.

Next is the promo ad for theater showings of the first U.S. Washington D.C. concert program, and then the program straight through until the abrupt cut durring the next to last song. All the stage rotating and banter, along with the music is included. Watchable quality here, but not the newly found tape source that Apple used a part in Anthology.

Third segment is the 1966 Tokyo "light suits" concert. Big surprise is the very poor video quality on this. I have seen this show look almost pristeen, as does the "dark suits" show that was available on Laserdisc from Japan. The audio is acceptable, wish they would have tracked down a much better copy of this show to put out.

Tacked on the end of the disc is a throw away biography and photo gallery. Now some more good news and bad. The case says this is "region 0" not "1" so anyone can use it. The case also says in very small print "PAL." I know this release was originally from Australia, which uses the PAL system, but I figured if it was released as a domestic item here it would be done NTSC. I have two players I can put DVDs in. The first player I tried would not play this disc. I got a couple frozen images then the disc would just hang and do nothing. The menu was one of the images, but without the controls to navigate it. Weirder part is, this is my region-free all-code player that is also supposed to handle PAL discs. My Pioneer combo Laserdisc/DVD unit played this disc fine. As far as I know, it is not supposed to handle PAL discs. Is the case wrong and the disc is actually NTSC? Or is this disc PAL like the case says and I'm lucky one of my players can handle it? Be warned, it could go either way for you too.

Rare concert material here all in one place, could have used better source tapes. Moot points if you can't get it to play at all.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been better
Review: As usual, the beatles can rescue any inferior product from oblivion just by being on it, and that's what they have done here. First up we had the British Beatle special which really seemed like a show that they put on to help their struggling friends, I mean, who are the Vernon sisters and it's very easy to see why Millie's run of hits stopped after "My Boy Lollypop". Mind you, the choreography was very well done for it's time and if there was ever a band that deserved success and recognition but never got it it was "Sounds Incorporated".
As for the concert footage, I'm sure that there was better quality stuff they could have used, or failing that they could have shelled out some bucks and restored it. But I did like the American TV ad for the Beatle cinema concert. All in all, I'd say buy this DVD but don't pay too much for it, because it's really not worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: It's great to see these shows finally being officially released on DVD. I've owned the Beatles' Washington concert onb bootleg for quite some time, and here it is officially! Also there is a Ready Steady Go appearance, and a Japan show. Not great quality, but still nice to have these shows officially available.

Now the bad news: the DVD is in PAL format, which means that unless you've got a multi-format DVD player, you won't be able to play this disc. It will play in your computer if you've got a DVD player in your computer.

Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: It's great to see these shows finally being officially released on DVD. I've owned the Beatles' Washington concert onb bootleg for quite some time, and here it is officially! Also there is a Ready Steady Go appearance, and a Japan show. Not great quality, but still nice to have these shows officially available.

Now the bad news: the DVD is in PAL format, which means that unless you've got a multi-format DVD player, you won't be able to play this disc. It will play in your computer if you've got a DVD player in your computer.