For the first time in a long, long time I fell for a DVD with amateur footage. Was it against better knowing? Well to be honest, I mainly bought it because the Japanese TV part, which I used to have on video…
Coverart
You can speak of a cover, but drop the word art. Just like the footage it is pretty amateurish, thou they used a great shot of our man on the front. The backside has some nice pictures too, all known and some of them very tiny. That goes for the used font too… probably the producers don’t realize that the average age of an Elvis fan must be above 40 by know, and a lot of them have problems with medicine leaflet-like typography (at least I do).
The picture DVD has the picture as the front, so that’s more than okay. The menus are just okay, but in the background some terrible Hawaiian tunes are used, a good reason to press play as soon as possible.
Content
The amateur footage of the three November shows is about what I expected. The November 17 evening show has a bright white man – I guess Elvis – on stage. Sometimes I’m even pretty sure it is Elvis, but most of the time his face is just one blank spot because of the light. The sound of this show is very poor.
The afternoon show of November 18 is slightly better, both in sound and image. The latter obviously caused by the fact Elvis was wearing the black Way Down suit, which doesn’t reflect the light as much as a light suit. Unfortunately his facial expression is still hard to see.
The evening show of the same day is again lesser in both sound and image. To prevent myself from needing an aspirin (and small letters again ;-)) I quickly switched to the professional footage from the Japanese TV.
Well, that was a huge disappointment… The video I had (unfortunately past tense) was way, way better. Not only the image but also the sound is far under par. Overall the meaning of the expression “digitally improved” – as was stated in the announcement of the DVD - is proven to be a very vague one. The originals the producers had must have been completely unwatchable, or they don’t speak English.
Conclusion
This was another waste of money in my opinion; I don’t think it’ll find its way to my DVD player again.
Hawaii 1972
By ElvisNews.com / Lex, January 09, 2007 | Video
secondrichard wrote on
January 09, 2007
I don't know what source these people used as I haven't seen this DVD yet. But recently I've obtained a similar DVD which was a copy of the homemade DVD mentioned on Elvis News some weeks earlier. The quality of that one was far superior to any video I had in the past (and I had loads of them containing the Hawaii '72 footage). When they've used the material from the homemade version they should have a great release. If not; why did they mess this up as good quality is available. Another "let's do it fast to earn a quick buck and don't give to much attention to the quality" production ?
wayup wrote on
January 09, 2007
secondrichard: I got the DVD today and I have older homemade version too. The quality of picture and sound is EXACTLY THE SAME in my opinion. In other words the home made DVDR was very likely used as master for this DVD, with some music replaced (studio songs for hawaiian music). Elvis is best visible when he is wearing Way Down suit. Other two shows - too much of reflections due to bright suits. In any case it seems reviewer just did not like it as a whole... his personal opinion of course. It is not that bad, I think. Quite OK.
Ton Bruins wrote on
January 14, 2007
Lex is right. This is trash. I have a video from this material that is in much better quality.