Review of Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells II & III

Introduction

Well, having not been able to find a review of this disk before I went out and bought it. I thought it might be a good idea to write one now :-).

I’ll start with a brief out line of what you get, the disk is a duel sided (not a flipper) DVD with 1 concert per side.
The first side contains the Tubular Bells 2 concert that was recorded at Edinburgh castle some years ago.
Side 2 contains the premier of Tubular Bells 3 that was recorded in 1999 at Horse Guards Parade in London.

Video

The visuals are full frame as it’s a music concert and was filmed that way. The picture is clean and for the most part sharp; the TB 3 concert has the edge on picture quality due to the film stock being recent on newer equipment.

Audio

This is where this disk really shines.

Both concerts contain an uncompressed stereo soundtrack and a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

The mix on the TB2 concert is slightly better in it’s stereo incarnation but it still has a good 5.1 remix that wont disappoint, however you can tell it’s a remix and not that much better then the old Pro-Logic mix that was on the concert video.

The TB3 concert however has a wonderful 5.1 mix that makes good use of the sub and will give a good speaker set a full workout. Tracks such as ‘Man in the rain’ really show how the soundtrack shines with very good reproduction of the vocals from the centre speaker and instruments from all the fronts (and the crowd behind).
The stereo mix is sill there for all you audiophile purists :-) and is also very nice.

Features

Hmm, there are some weakly animated menus. But not much else I am afraid.
It would have been wonderful to see some of the encore tracks from the TB3 concert but nothing in life is perfect I guess :-(.

Conclusion

If you’re a Mike Oldfield fan then BUY THIS NOW :-).
The TB3 concert looks and sounds fantastic, the TB2 concert sounds great in stereo and looks good for it’s age.
All in all, it’s a nice DVD package with some small shortcomings but is a must for fans (me included).