Since these are anniversary times, I've had a look at the different sources of footage from the Beatles' first U.S. concert in Washington, D.C., to compare the quality (no A/Bs, just looking at the one after the other). All of this are the latest DVD releases:
The following songs were played at the concert:
* Roll Over Beethoven
* From Me To You
* I Saw Her Standing There
* This Boy
* All My Loving
* I Wanna Be Your Man
* Please Please Me
* Till There Was You
* She Loves You
* I Want To Hold Your Hand
* Twist And Shout
* Long Tall Sally
I seem to recall having heard that "Long Tall Sally" is not available anywhere (?).
"Anthology" DVD:
* She Loves You
* I Saw Her Standing There
* Please Please Me
On the first song, "She Loves You," both picture and sound quality are quite decent. At least three sources of film seems to have been used for the picture - the "usual" source (the closed-circuit film), the Maysles brothers footage and, obviously, some audience footage in colour from the front left of the stage. The Maysles brothers footage looks the best, the audience footage is a nice touch. The main footage looks a bit like a slightly worn film transfer of a video. The sync seems to be a slight bit wrong on this song.
For the other songs, the quality improves quite a bit, IMHO, and the audio a bit as well. The footage now looks like a pretty decent video copy.
There's a bit of voice-over by Neil Aspinall before the first song. Nothing to get upset about. :-)
"The First U.S. Visit" DVD:
* I Saw Her Standing There
* I Wanna Be Your Man
* She Loves You
Picture quality is approximately like the "She Loves You" bit on Anthology. Sound quality is decent. A bit strange that they haven't used the better footage where they were able to... but any fan simply needs to have this DVD in his/her collection regardless. :-)
A bit of Maysles footage has again been used during "She Loves You".
"The Beatles In Washington, D.C." DVD:
* Roll Over Beethoven
* From Me To You
* I Saw Her Standing There
* I Wanna Be Your Man
* Please Please Me
* Till There Was You
* She Loves You
* I Want To Hold Your Hand
Picture quality like a worn video - "fuzzy". Sound acceptable, but not exactly GOOD. There are voice-overs (and "picture-overs") by the Beatles et. al. between the songs, but I personally don't find them too disturbing. There are some interview bits there that I actually hadn't heard before.
"Around The World" DVD:
Almost the complete concert, with the exceptions that "Long Tall Sally" is still not included, and "Twist And Shout" ends abruptly. It's still more than can be found anywhere else.
It's probably taken from the same source as the "In Washington, D.C." DVD, but the picture quality to my eyes seems a bit more grainy, rather than fuzzy. It also may be a bit darker. This makes it look a bit better to me. The sound also seems a bit better, but still not great.
Conclusion: Well, of course you've gotta have (and probably have already) both the "Anthology" and "First U.S. Visit" DVDs, which contain the best available quality footage from this concert. :-)
But you only get four songs in total on those two DVDs, and if you want more or less the complete thing, my advice is to look for the "Around The World" DVD. It can be found quite cheaply, the quality is fairly acceptable and as a bonus it also contains the full "Around The Beatles" program and a 1966 concert from the Budokan hall in Tokyo in rather fuzzy colour. :-)
It's also a lot easier to track down than the "In Washington, D.C." DVD, which doesn't contain the full concert anyway, has a picture quality that at least to my eyes doesn't look as good as "Around The World," and has voice-overs between the songs that may irritate some.
The only problem (for the Americans and Japanese, anyway) is that I'm not sure if it's available in NTSC. (Editor's note: It is.)A customer review on the DVD's amazon.com page seems to indicate that the copy he received from them was PAL.
http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/news/328washingtoncompare.html
