Topic: Legends of the AFBF

[blueshome]

I know this  has been mentioned elsewhere but I just received a copy of "Legends o fthe American Folk Blues Festivals 67-69" DVD via Amazon.

I can highly recommend this - most of the stuff has not been available and includes performances by John Jackson, Skip James, both Walters,Whistling Alex Moore, Big Joe Williams, Juke Boy Bonner, Clifton Chenier, and plenty of nice Chicago electric stuff including a band with T-Bone Walker playing some nifty jazz-styled piano alongside Eddie Taylor and Big Walter ().

It just shows how much we have lost. Not all the performances are the artists' greatest moments, but its all we have so make the most of it.

[doctorpep]

I'd love to order that, but I'm not getting any matches on Amazon!  Would it be possible for you to give me the link to this? Thank you very much!

[blueshome]

Just checked - the DVD is a PAL all region sourced from Germany (it has English subtitles for the interviews). I got it off amazon uk. Don't know if it'll play on your colonial type players but you could check.

[dj]

PAL won't play in the US (unless you have a player you bought in the EU).  But Hip-O has put out 3 voulmes of The American Folk Blues Festival 1962 - 1969 here, and a separate one called The American Folk Blues Festival, The British Tours 1963 - 1966.  I just got this last one, and it's really nice - Sonny Boy, Muddy, and the Wolf are there, along with Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Joe Williams, and others, including a wonderful performance of Lonnie Johnson solo, flatpicking "It's Too Late To Cry" on acoustic guitar.       

[banjochris]

Just wanted to mention -- there are quite a few US DVD players that will play both Region 2 from Europe and that will convert PAL to NTSC -- mostly cheap ones. Most Philips models, since they're sold both in the US and Europe, will do it. Just Google "region hack" and the model of your DVD player to find out if it's possible. Usually you just have to punch a code on your remote to change the region to 0, and then it'll play everything. Converting the video is a different issue, but many that do one will do the other.
Chris

[Rivers]

If you're happy to play them only on a PC most(all?) PC DVD drives support NTSC and PAL. I'm no media hacker but I assume that's because the video presentation smarts are in software on the PC, the DVD player just hands-off the raw digital stream to the computer to handle.

A standalone DVD player that plugs-in to analog TV jacks has to deliver a ready-to-show-and-hear a/v signal, not just a bitstream, which implies a lot of additional processing hardware and software up front, and is why they're usually single format, cheaper to produce  and good enough for 95% of the population.

We don't do TV, digital or analog, at our house at present so it's a no brainer for me! 

Region code removal on a consumer DVD-direct-to-analog-TV box can often be achieved with a hack as mentioned. For the PC, Google "SlySoft AnyDVD", great product, highly recommended. I have so many region 5 DVDs there was no way I was going to buy them all again after I moved here, screw that.

AnyDVD also, by the way, removes encryption from the stream so you can rip them to your iPod using another product available on their website, CloneDVD Mobile. Works, amazingly well. Not that I ever watch DVD videos on the iPod but at least I can if I want to.

[blueshome]

Now you boys in the colonies have figured out how to watch it, I suggest you buy it.