Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii DVD

Has anyone heard any news about this? I heard a while back that this was planned for a DVD release. My poor old worn out VHS can't take many more plays and it looks awful!! Any info would be appreciated.

Thanx,
James

My Polygram Laser Disc of this title looks and sounds fantastic. So I plan on burning to to DVD once I get that burner action going.

There were two US VHS releases of this film. The first one was fairly rough, and later one was struck from a better print.

This later issue is as good as it will ever look. I should look to see if it has dolby SS or not as I think the original film was shown in Quad in select theaters.

Jeff

So, how do they turn out? Look as good as the original
or does it degrade it? And what about 'digital artifacts'..
do you get those? And what sort of sound do you get..
is it LPCM or one of those lossy formats? I'm thinking
about getting a DVD recorded, but have no clue about
any of them. For some strange reason there is a Philips
machine going for $500, but that seems too cheap.

Laser Disc to DVD has no artifacts at all. The picture on LD is uncompressed analog at it finest. For sound, there can be a bit of loss, but not major.

This kind of recording takes some skill, and the right software. A computer DVD burner is the way to do it right as standalones offer fewer editing features.

Jeff

I have copied LDs to my Pioneer DVD stand alone recorder with little or no problems. They come out fine. However, since you can only record one layer, you only get an hour per disc at the best resolution. So, if you have a real good disc that you want to copy, you have to copy each side of the LD to a separate DVD.

:-jon

'Still waiting for it on DVD myself. I wore my VHS tape out too.

There is a way for we who are waiting for the DVD to emerge to get hold of a copy, and that's to buy it on VCD (remember them?) Try somewhere like www.vcdvideo.com or one of the multitude of other online retailers.

Yes, I am serious, and no, VCD quality really isn't that bad. It's no worse than VHS at any rate, so it's certainly watchable, and as a bonus, you can't wear it out. I'm actually becoming something of a fan of these VCD's -they're cheap, durable, and take up little space. In this case it costs less than $10 & comes on 2 disks.

Main problem is that VCD is usually PAL encoded, not NTSC. Fine for me, as I'm in the UK, but if you're in North America, a little awkward. Not an impossible problem though, as it'll work fine on a PC. A little cunning manipulation via one of the many free VCD authoring / capture pieces of software, and a freshly encoded burn onto CD-R shouldn't be hard.

"Pink Floyd at Pompeii" wasn't exactly quad, it was discrete 4-channel with the sound being carried by magnetic stripes on the 35mm prints. The track layout was the same as 4-track features had been since the 1950s: Left, Center, Right and mono surround.

Those magnetic prints sounded *stunning*, though. And yes, the laserdisc--though not marked as such--appears to have encoded the audio in Dolby Surround.

Hmmm, that's very interesting. I'll have to try running my LD through a quad decoder and see what kind of performance I can get... I smell a conversion project!

I heard June 6th as the release date, but that might be for region 2 only. Let's hope not.

From www.brain-damage.co.uk:

LIVE AT POMPEII DVD UPDATE: We spoke to our contacts at Universal today about the Pompeii DVD. The disc is not yet ready for release, and they are currently looking at late September or early October for release. We will be getting more details closer to the release date, so we will keep you up to date with developments...