London/Hammersmith (24-Nov-03)

I really like the result, very strong performances and its very crips and the sound is just top notch. Recommended.

I agree with the previous review - this DVD is great because it captures the atmosphere of the show remarkably well, it brings back amazing memories for those of us that were there.
Sound and picture are great, it's not the closest all the time and sometimes it's obscured or the camera shakes, but it feels like you're there in the audience. On some films, that's a bad thing, but on this one it's great.
The picture is sharp and clear and the colours and detail are very real. The sound is great also.

First of all, the DVD itself is authored and structured brilliantly. The menu is functional and easy to use and the chapters and songs of the actual partially recorded concert are flawless and flow together perfectly, assisted by the way the audience sound is crossfaded across tracks (consider other overdubbed DVDs where only partial extracts of the concert were videoed and the sound files are just cut and spliced together, a very irritating trait, but one absent from 280.sse).

To summarise the sound is absolutely perfect and I was also lucky enough to experience the 5.1 AC3 surround sound track aswell. It has been put together really well with audience sounds filling the room and the majority of the music and vocals being fed to the front 3 channels. In short, it’s one of the most enjoyable to listen to DVDs out there and cannot be flawed.

And this good form continues with the technical quality of the picture. The camera used must have been a high quality 3 chip camera as it captures the scene perfectly. There are no focus issues at all, and I think I can genuinely say this is the best quality show I've ever watched in terms of lighting and focus. The camera movement is slightly stagnant at times and does have a tendency to focus on Mr Dylan for the majority of the show, which is unfortunate as some of the better filmed shows like the New York MSG series of August 2003 show that is possible to balance between band members' solos and the front man's singing and keyboards. There is also a lot of heads in the shots for a large proportion of the concert but the person operating the camera tries their hardest to work around this, and it only obscures parts of the picture so can't really be criticised too much.

Sometimes when a DVD only features parts of a performance, the songs shown are the same old numbers like Highway 61 or Honest with Me, but here the songs chosen are all slight rarities or at the very least very special choices. The London shows of November 2003 will long go down in Bob-history as being truly special for their fantastic setlist choices with songs being played that hadn't been played all year, or in the case of some in 27 years. And that’s one of the very best things about the modern DV, minidisc and DVD age; all of these shows have been recorded both with high-fidelity audio devices, and also video recording equipment.

One of my favourite moments of the DVD, and indeed of any Dylan DVD, is the performance of the track from "desire" - Romance in Durango, its first airing since the 11th May 1976! The crowd’s reaction when Bob lets out that first line "hot chili peppers in the blistering sun" is truly amazing and you know that they know something special is happening.

While some DVDs (Toronto 2004 being an example) are solid and reliable, they also lack that special indescribable something that this DVD has. Get it.