I have no complaints re: the audio, as I'm pretty sure they've given us everything they've got, and I'm happy with the mixes.Mike in New Jersey wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:29 pmCertainly if someone already owns the FTD and was going to buy this for the blu-ray, I'd tell them to save their money. The image quality of the blu-ray is a touch different, but I'd not argue, any better than the dvd. The rehearsal show mix, as it turns out, is better than I thought it would be, but again, not leaps and bounds better than the last mix of that show. Unless you're the type that has to own every alternate mix of songs or shows, if you already have the FTD, and the Deluxe DVD set, you can safely stand pat.rockinrebel wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:18 pmI bought the FTD knowing that a mainstream release was still very likely, but I was hoping that this 50th anniversary edition would be the final word on Aloha and unfortunately it isn't. I've given up buying multiple copies of things until they finally get it right.Mike in New Jersey wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:10 pmIs it possible, the FTD was rush released? It makes sense. Perhaps at some point in the past, Sony gave the Ok for Aloha to be released on FTD, but without a firm date. With the 50th anniversary coming, perhaps Ernst called Sony on that marker and the resultant FTD release was a compromise. It would explain why it was released last year instead of this year (they knew the Sony project was due out this year).
I'm happy with my old DVD set for the footage, and I can now stream the new mixes via Amazon, so there's no incentive for me to buy this set at all...
Edit: what, in your opinion, would they have to have done to "get it right" in this instance? Short of doing a fresh scan of the master videos of the shows and the rest, which I'm not sure would have resulted in significantly better PQ, it seems to me there's not much they could do about the video content. The Aloha shows never looked that great to begin with...good, but not great.
Re: the blu ray, if re-scanning would have produced any significant improvements then I would have expected Sony to do that.
But at the very least, the set should have included all the available footage including the arrival and the press conferences, and i would also have liked the option of watching the shows with Matt Ross's new mixes.
The 40th anniversary re-edit went a bit overboard with the split screens and special effects, so I think there was also an opportunity here for a new, tasteful re-edit.
A documentary is long overdue too, and could have presented the opportunity to use the pro shot Japanese footage from November '72, and any super 8 concert film EPE have in the archive from the '72 - '73 period.
But do we ever see such creativity with mainstream Presley projects?