evilbaby

Here is the official press release;

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Champion!

Queen's Greatest Video Hits on DVD For the First Time

Greatest Video Hits 1 DVD For release October 15, 2002.

Containing no less than 22 of the band's all-time greatest hits, Queen – Greatest Video Hits 1 DVD is the first of a series of DVD releases from Queen which will revisit the band's legendary video catalogue and make it available in the most advanced audio and visual formats currently in existence.

Compiled directly from the band's phenomenally successful Greatest Hits 1 album, which has to date sold in excess of 25 million copies worldwide, the DVD arrives after more than twelve months of extensive archive research and audio and visual enhancement.

Under the close supervision of Brian May and Roger Taylor, Queen engineer Justin Shirley Smith has re-mixed these classic Queen tracks from the original masters in both stunning DTS 5.1 surround sound and stereo.

David Mallet, whose association with Queen as video director spans over 20 years, has meticulously overseen the restoration of the videos. The majority, some, astoundingly, almost 30 years old, have been re-graded and colourised giving them a new lease of life.

It is the first time a DVD project of this scale has been undertaken. And never has Bohemian Rhapsody sounded like this!

In addition to the enhancement of the original audio and visual tracks, Greatest Video Hits 1 DVD, packaged as a double disc set, also offers a host of bonus material:

A brand new audio commentary from Brian and Roger, exclusively recorded for this DVD.

6 extra tracks – including an unique version of Good Old Lover Boy recorded especially for BBC TV's Top of the Pops.

A special section devoted to Bohemian Rhapsody, recently voted the No.1 song of the past 50 years, including a unique documentary in which Brian May revisits the original 24 track studio and explains how this landmark song was created.

A picture gallery featuring previously unseen shots of the band, and a specially re-edited version of the famous nude Bicycle Race filmed at Wembley Stadium in 1978 containing previously unseen footage discovered in the archive.

Also included as a bonus hidden video is the rarely seen second edit of Bohemian Rhapsody, specially made for Top of The Pops as a means of injecting some variety into the band's week-on-week appearances on the show over the 9 weeks the song remained at No.1 on the charts.

Queen Video Hits 1 DVD

Disc 1: 16 Tracks/DTS Surround Sound/PCM Sound/16.9 widescreen/Comprehensive audio commentary from Queen.

Bohemian Rhapsody/Another One Bites The Dust/Killer Queen/Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race/You're My Best Friend/Don't Stop Me Now/Save Me/Crazy Little Thing Called Love/Somebody To Love/Spread Your Wings/Play The Game/Flash/Tie Your Mother Down/We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions

Disc 2: 6 Tracks/Bonus Tracks:

Now I'm Here/Good Old Fashioned Loverboy/Keep Yourself Alive/Liar/Love Of My Life/We Will Rock You (fast live version)/Inside The Rhapsody (documentary)

Photo Gallery – cut to 'Seven Seas Of Rhye'

QOL – 4 x Factual pages about Queen Online (queenonline.com)

Bonus Hidden Video

The double disc package also features a twenty page full colour booklet providing rare photo images, complete histories of all of the videos, together with written contributions from members of the band and many of those involved in Queen's extraordinary video collection."

fiver

This is great news! Queen is one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and I've been waiting for this to come out on dvd to replace my vhs copy. Great stuff and with dts surround no less! woohoo!

Michael

Ginwen

Excellent. I've been hoping for something like this.

Bonus is, it'll give me a Q DVD, which is the one letter I don't have (my own weird little completion thing).

Rogue588

Whoo f'n Hoo!

Bout time we get something on this side of the pond.

Kevo

There's just one 'small problem'....

They've gone and cropped (butchered?) all the videos from 4:3 to 16:9 ???

Why they have done this is anybody's guess.

These are not open matte films, they were originally intended and framed with an aspect ratio of 4:3, so cropping them to fit 16:9 will surely ruin the image on some/most shots.

Why couldn't they just keep them in their OAR?

They did this with the recent FM Tribute concert DVD.

Why replace perfectly good image resolution with blackness???

It's taken Queen so long to release a DVD, I think they don't quite understand the technology.

Rypro 525

we will just have to wait and see how badly cropped these videos would look. i am looking forward to this as well since there is a featurette on how br was made (my all time favorite song)

Kevo

Why wait, have a look here....

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~kevinmulla...RhapFrames.htm

tommy28

So i guess i could pick this up at Best Buy Brick and morter?????

or will this be hard to find?

ts-

tommy28

Ok Guys and Gals,got it today

i watched some(samples)on a 80x45 screen with CRT projection and L7 MC-1 sound in a dedicated room,and there is was no BIGGER queen fan then i growing up,this includes you evilbaby

the positives,the sound

the DTS tracks on disk 1 is outstanding,steller and just plain kick ass...every song sounds great..*****

A special section devoted to Bohemian Rhapsody, recently voted the No.1 song of the past 50 years, including a unique documentary in which Brian May revisits the original 24 track studio and explains how this landmark song was created. was also great,it takes you into how the song was made track to track*****

i did not listen to any of the commentary or find the hidden video,i leave that to you

some of the negitives,the video-

i use a scalar so im not going to get into the cropping,

But most if not all the video was taken from what ever source and put onto the dvd..some early tracks(70`s)look better then tracks from the 80`s...also the 2end disk with some great songs is not DTS,2.0 only...


i would have liked to see the songs on the first disk laid out in order...early stuff to later stuff...you see freddy with long hair rocking then the next video starts,and you see the short haird Mustash(spelled wrong im sure) freddy,then back to long hair...no big deal though,just kinda funny...

All in all this is a great set-the sound is as good as any music dvd iv ever heard,and iv heard most...if they can do this with all there stuff we are in for a real treat..im sure there is alot more to see but i had to get back to work...

Buy this and enjoy...

Kevo

c'mon tommy28

Don't kop out

What's the cropping like?

tommy28

The cropping does not bother me at all!!!!

but im an 80x45 manso i would scale it that way anyway...

evilbaby

Mine should arrive in the next day or 2.

Jnuke

Finished watching this last night and I have to agree with you. The songs in surround sound better than I've ever heard them, but I honestly got a little bored watching the videos. Since these are from the early days of the format, there's not a whole lot of creativity or production values involved. And no, the prints aren't in very good shape. As a fan, it's a cool look at how the band has presented itself over the years, but the basic same-ness of the videos became a bit tiresome watching them back to back.
I can't quite decide if I feel this package was worth the $19.99 I spent on it.
At this point I'm looking much more forward to Volume II, which should be more interesting visually.

tommy28

Since im a Huge Queen fan 19.99 is a small price to pay to have these for the rest of my life..i feel that at this point with Freddy gone this is one way to keep the Queen memory alive...although the video is NOT top notch the sound is again WONDERFULL...

Bottom line-as long as they put forth the effort with some good extras sound and video(good or bad)ill keep on buying.....im older nowbut-Long Live The Queen

ts

Kevo

For a Forum whose members are usually v pro OAR, I am very surprised that nobody has made a comment about the
re-formatting from 4:3 to 16:9.

This is something that bothers me and is the second Queen DVD to have had this 'odd treatment'.

I haven't seen it yet.

Does it look that bad?

Surely some (most?) shots would look v badly framed.

Rypro 525

is the br video the original that came out in the 70's or is it the waynes world version?

Kevo

Oh dear

evilbaby

Kevo, watch the DVD first then come back and complain.

The "..Rhapsody" video on the disc is the original version, no Wayne or Garth to be found (thank goodness.)

Kevo

Sorry, I thought this forum was very much pro OAR.
Must have been mistaken.

tommy28

Such a great disk i thought id move to the top-

Buy it

ts

Ginwen

Great DVD. I love the videos, cheese-factor and all. The sound is great.

Wish it was OAR, though. The whole reformatting to widescreen trend (well, ok, only a couple of releases, so a mini-trend) I find to be very odd.

tommy28

So,

evilbaby,did you get/watch it yet????

thoughts?

tommy

evilbaby

Briefly.....sound was great, widescreen didn't bother me, picture quality varied from poor to somewhat decent. Most of the "extras" were filler except the 3rd part of the "Rhapsody" doc with May breaking the song down bit by bit, that I found extremely interesting.

So it's nice to have the videos, I only wish they could've looked better but since these are low budget videos from the 70's (and shot on videotape) I suppose I shouldn't complain too much.

Spiderbite

Was bumping to see if there was anyone here who has this set. Just looking for some fresh opinions as I was thinking of picking it up.

I recently got Part 2 at a music store for 10 bucks. It was interesting but the quality of the videos were pretty poor & many of them messed up between 4:3 and 16x9. The DTS sound is okay but comes nowhere even close to the sound on their DVD-Audio discs.

I haven't watched the 2nd disc yet but the most interesting item so far were the May & Taylor commentaries for each video. They don't hold back their feelings about the videos or the songs. Two things you immediately learn about Taylor: He hates making videos & he is very conscious about what he is wearing. The guys don't hold back when they don't like a song either which is refreshing.

Were they recorded together or separately? Sometimes they sound like they are in the same room & other times it seems obvious they aren't.

Also note: I think Queen can lay claim to possibly making the worst videos of any mega-rock band ever. The ones on Part 2 (covering Hot Space to The Miracle...possibly their worst time musically anyway) were truly horrid.

The Infidel

Well, you've got to take into consideration when Queen was really big. When they were in their prime, music videos weren't exactly what they are today. Record companies couldn't have given two shits about putting money into making something entertaining. And when music videos actually started to be something more than just watching the band "play" their song in a "live" setting, you gotta admit that pretty much all videos from that era were genuinely bad. Once the record companies realized that selling a good video meant more album sales, Queen actually made a few decent videos...at least, no worse than a lot of the crap that gets made today.

All that said, definitely pick up Volume 1. Queen's biggest classics lay within. If you can't enjoy the videos, at least you get the great music in DTS.