There is both great and bad news for Neil Young fans these days. The great news is that his long delayed Archive retrospective will finally see the light of day in September, 2008. This is huge news considering this collection has been talked about for 20 some-odd years now. The bad news is that Neil is releasing this in Blue-ray DVD format ONLY. This is super for the 1% of Neil Young fans that have a Blu-ray player, but it completely alienates the rest of his fan base. With cheep Blu-ray players still hovering the $300.00-400.00 range, I know I'm sure not in a position to run out and get one just because of my love for Neil Young.
In Neil's defence, he has said the reason this Archive project has taken so long is because there was never a suitable format available to achieve what he wanted to do with it. Blu-ray offers much larger storage space so it can hold audio and Video in amazing quality. I know Neil has the best interests of his art and fans at heart, but I fear this will end up having the opposite effect he is hoping for. How many people are going to download the inevitable Bit-Torrent of this stuff just because they don't have a freaking player to play it on even if they did buy it?
Leave it to Neil Young; after all these years he continues to baffle fans and industry folks alike. I know after looking at the trailer for the package, I may just be asking for a Blu-ray player for Hanukkah. Maybe Neil knows what he's doing after all...
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