Iron Maiden: Live After Death
I won’t spend much time talking about all of the fantastic things about this video, because everyone already knows how great this classic concert film is. 2 things I will point out that I really like about the DVD release are:
- The 5.1 sound is great. Generally I prefer the stereo track on DVD concert videos, but this is an exception. The 5.1 mix is much better than the stereo mix on this release
- All of the bonus material on Disc 2 is great, and a lot of fun to watch for the first time.
Now on to why I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5:
- I was really hoping they would clean up the video quality for the DVD release. It looks like it was ported over from a slightly faded, grainy VHS tape. With that being said, I am watching this on a big 52″ TV and that may be revealing more of the video limitations than a smaller TV will.
Also, just as a note, the preview video at Amazon clearly shows the LAD concert footage in a widescreen format. The LAD concert is actually in 4:3 format, and not 16:9 as shown in the preview. This is probably a good thing, though, as converting it to 16:9 would have resulted in the cropping of the original aspect ratio.
Even though I think that they could have done a much better job cleaning up the original picture quality, this is still a must have DVD for your concert DVD collection. After all these years, it’s still at the top of the list as one of the best heavy metal concerts ever captured on tape.