Review of Queen The DVD Collection: Greatest Video Hits 1 (2 Discs)

Introduction

Once upon a time a band was born. This band was called Queen and the rest is history!

Queen need no introduction, their music is timeless and everyone knows a few of their numerous hits. From huge operatic numbers like Bohemian Rhapsody to the excellent soundtrack to Highlander, their music has remain current through 3 decades.

This collection corresponds essentially to their Greatest Hits CD, a staple of most decent CD collections.

To aid the reader, I recommend reading the bit about the sound first (It`s awesome) rather than the video (rubbish, boo, hoss etc).

Video

It all starts off ok with a fairly nicely rendered Queen logo rolling into the animated menu system but then it all falls down.

To put it bluntly the video quality is terrible, everything is blurry, colour swim around the spectrum, pictures like this would give VHS a bad name!

Presented as an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer, the picture has in fact been cropped from the original fullframe, rendering some scenes a little odd and badly framed.

Audio

The PCM stereo soundtrack makes my old cd sound good, so that `s not a good start. There`s no Dolby Digital........ but wait, what`s this?

It`s the saving grace, and the reason to buy this collection - a full bitrate 96khz/24bit DTS soundtrack, just about the best I`ve heard on a DVD. That`s something like 1905Kbps. That`s a lot of data.

Such a soundtrack eats into the bitrate deliverable from a disc and could explain the low quality visuals. It might also be problematic for cheaper players to deliver, especially if they are doing the decoding.

The quality is simply superb, a lot of serious effort has gone into remixing into 5.1 channels of pure Queen bliss. The balance is just about right, making you feel fully immersed within the soundfield in a way that a simple stereo track never could. The build up to a track like Flash is excellent, Bohemian Rhapsody really and truly rocks - the CD is in the bin as I type this :)

Features

The commentary on disc 1, by the remaining band members is worth listening to, giving a good insight into the songs.

Disc 2 isn`t so earth shattering from a musical standpoint as it`s only in PCM stereo but the content is pretty good. As well as 6 bonus songs, there`s a series of featurettes about the Bohemian Rhapsody song and video featuring Roger Taylor and Brian May.

The discs come in an Amray-type case with some background information on the songs on the discs.

Conclusion

Assuming you have a good DTS 5.1 set-up, this collection rocks. Yes, the visuals are bad but when the sound is this good, who cares :)

If you like Queen, more importantly of you like how Queen sound, then get this collection!