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

One of England`s most successful and revolutionary rock band in the last century, Queen is always been the first to make revolutionary music videos. It was in the `80s. This first volume of Queen`s Greatest Video Hits DVDs contains 16 videos from the 1970s - an age before MTV when music videos were only good for one time airing on a TV show. The videos are made between 1974 and 1980 beginning with the band`s long-hair progressive rock image and ending with their first synthetisator-songs. Because music videos were rare in that age mostly we see concert footage or TV appearances (from BBC`s "Top of the Pops" show). The only remarkable video is legendary "Bohemian Rhapsody". There are a few good ones ("Bicycle Race" with nude cycling girls or "Save Me" with it`s anime cartoon sequences) but overall they aren`t make much impression in the viewer.

Video: The image quality is poor. It looks like VHS copied to DVD. The 25-30 years old videos have been touched by time, they are grainy, blurry and scratched. For unknown reasons all of the videos originally shot for TV`s 1.33:1 aspect ratio has been transferred to 1.78:1 widescreen which is made by cropping their top and bottom making some scenes look awkward. In many cases (like during Bo Rhap`s opera sequence) it is a very annoying experience. For a band known from it`s perfectionist members, this image quality is really poor.

Audio: Seems like the makers of this DVD are DTS fans. The audio is DTS 5.1 surround which sounds really good, but for those who hasn`t got DTS this is a real disappointment. Aside DTS there is only PCM sound. It`s about that quality as if we put a Queen CD on our DVD player.

Features: On the first disc there is an audio commentary by members of Queen. It`s not very informative but it`s good to hear Freddie`s and John`s voice from archive footage. The second DVD is the special features disc. Mostly it has got things for fans of Bohemian Rhapsody. On this disc there are six extra videos. Some of them are rare (like "Keep Yourself Alive" and "Liar" shot for promoting a concert in 1974) but these are in the same quality as videos on disc one. There are a documentary called "Behind the Rhapsody" which is in devided for four parts. The first two are really just some talk with Brian May and Roger Taylor during the showing of the Bo Rhap video. The third is footage about the two receiving an award which they got for the greatest British single (guess which). The fourth is really the most interesting. With Brian in the studio we can listen to the original BR record tapes and hear Freddie`s original music ideas! The other interesting feature is a photo gallery composed from rare black and white images for the music of "Seven Seas of Rhye". There is also and easter egg - we can watch an alternate version of the BR video.

Say nothing more, I wanted more from Queen. Hopefully on GVH2 which contains the MTV-era videos there will be much more imaginative work by the Four Immortals.