DealsDeal Alert: Pink Floyd / Division Bell
Pink Floyd‘s Division Bell super deluxe edition box set has dropped in price for a second time on Amazon UK with the price now under £100.
The seven-disc set is vinyl heavy, but does includes a blu-ray with a brand new hi-res 5.1 surround mix of the album, as well as a CD. It is now just over £99.99 which is nearly £50 cheaper than the original listing of £148.50. Any pre-orders will of course get the cheaper price. It’s out in just over a week, on 30 June 2014.
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The Pink Floyd webstore now says:
DVD content
Marooned Video
The Division Bell Stereo PCM
The Division Bell Dolby Digital 5.1
The Division Bell DTS 5.1
So not just the 5.1 mix.
I ordered the vinyl/DVD/unnecessaries bundle when it was available, looking forward to it arriving next week.
Close it down if you don’t like it Paul. I made my point quite clearly and didn’t really want to discuss it ad nauseam. It is my right to correct somebody when they repeatedly misquote or misinterpret me however.
Read every comment back and at no point have either of us been insulting, I personally don’t mind polite disagreements.
It is £99 and still £50 overpriced. The Bluray should be released separately. End of story.
(Hm. I can’t reply to David anymore in-thread, so I’ll reply as another comment.)
You are being pedantic. To “complain” means to “find fault” or “express dissatisfaction,” which are hardly distinguishable from the “criticism” aspect of your “observational criticism.” How do terms like “leaves a sour taste in the mouth” and “poor decision” end up on one side of your imaginary divide and not the other? You are not “merely pointing out certain facts,” you are also expressing opinions about them. Which is fine; that’s exactly what these forums are for, but to say that they are “criticism” but not “complaints,” and that this distinction is so important as to require writing an entire paragraph about it to “[put me] straight” on it, is the very definition of pedantic.
The description of the contents of the DVD on the Pink Floyd shop is bracingly clear: “a DVD containing a 5.1 audio mix of The Division Bell.” There is no more information about it, on this website or any other. Your statements that the “DVD has absolutely no information as to the contents” and is to be “bought blind” are hard to square with what’s posted in the shop. My only “assumption” is that the DVD contains what the shop says it does.
From what I can tell, your primary point of observational criticism seems to be that the Bluray is unavailable separately. My response was, if all one cares about is the 5.1 mix, my guess is that the DVD would likely suffice for that purpose, at a fraction of the cost of the box. If you also care about the other things on the Bluray, and it seems that you do, then the DVD will not suffice, and your complaint to that effect is entirely warranted. :-)
Adam and David could you please agree to disagree. I don’t want to have to close the comments down on Pink Floyd, but it’s getting rather tedious. We all know the facts, they aren’t releasing the blu-ray separately, the DVD has 5.1 on it and the shipping is expensive. £6 in the UK to send one DVD. Picking on each other’s interpretations doesn’t really add to the overall debate, along with ‘definitions’ of ‘complain’, criticism etc.
In summary, feel free to criticism the product, but let’s not criticise each other – we’re all on the same side here :) Thanks, Paul (Editor).
I have tried to correct you regarding your complaints against my criticisms. My original post was rhetorical and I did not want a discussion with you about it. I stand by my original statement.
You have either purposefully misread or chosen to misunderstand my clear reasoning and uncomplicated points so I can’t help you any further.
The only pedant that has been posting here is yourself as you have repeatedly sought to misinterpret and argue, I have only corrected you where you have used accusatory language and been wrong in such an obvious way I felt it needed correcting.
David i am with you on that one, we are not complaining at all. We are giving an undivided opinion on what we think are the best possible thoughts and ideas of the package. Does it look good? Are you happy with the packaging? Are the contents up to a standard that should be a high standard to us the consumers? As there are a number of formats for sound
and to me this has always been an issue no matter which way you look at it. With all these recent super deluxe edition releases and i guarantee there will be more on the way. As i have 3 bluray players on the go, i am happy and over “the moon” the Dark Side of course if they are in bd 5.1
surround sound to me they sound wicked. In regards to The Division Bell, now i guess you can call this a complaint, talk about over priced,
originally 148 pounds!!! and now 99!! How about another 50 off? I have a strange feeling that some of the box sets will be gathering dust.
Who knows.
Agreed Robert. If this were Animals of The Final Cut it’d be a different matter. The Division Bell? Once was enough for me.
This is still too high.
I can see them hustling for as much money as possible for albums from their peak era- Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, etc.
I thought this album is decent but not great.
I would consider this price for Animals but not for this.
The answers still “no.”
99 quid is $200 in Australia.
Way too much, considering the new Queen 2 x CD 1 DVD + 1 BluRay Live box set is $80 on Amazon.com
Thanks for the heads up on Queen mate, I’ll take that. Another one where it’s the only way to get the Blu-ray, but at least the price is half decent.
TDB box listed at $200 at Jb Hifi as well. Not a chance!
Having looked closely at the official unboxing video of this set I have noticed that the big book is definitely just an over-sized lyric booklet with seemingly no new extra information. I certainly saw no text aside from the lyrics and credits and no images different to those in the original booklet.
The CD was released in 2011 and most fans interested in this box will undoubtedly have it.
The bulk of the vinyl are reproductions and hold no new audio. The originals were released less than 20 years ago and are readily available on the second hand market.
The postcards and prints are old pictures and of little interest if you buy these things for the audio.
What you have here is two new products – the main album on vinyl with the full length versions of the songs and the Bluray with high-res audio and 5.1 mix.
The vinyl has been released separately which is fair but the Bluray has not. That is a poor decision. The 5.1 has been released on DVD, but as with the Bluray without any details whatsoever so you are buying blind to some extent. The postage price of the DVD was also excessive.
It is a very, very bulked out box and as in the case of the Oasis box, heavily overpriced. I could see it at £79.99 but that would still be a bit steep considering the amount of stuff in the box that a lot people will not want.
We have had good double-disc releases recently pairing a CD with a 5.1 mix on Bluray/DVD for less than £15 from the likes of King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull and ELP etc. (the Brain Salad Surgery 5.1 farce aside). It is this fact that leaves a sour taste in the mouth when faced with the presentation and options offered by this and the Immersion Pink Floyd releases.
It would be nice in future if aside from offering a box that covers everybody at a price that suits nobody they could offer the big draw items in separate cheaper packages as a lot of other bands seem to do quite easily.
Too much disparity in the marketplace for me.
I’m confused: You’re complaining that they didn’t offer the “big draw” items separately, but the full 2LP on vinyl and the surround mix ARE available separately. (I can’t imagine the Blu-ray would sound THAT much better, frankly.) The other items are, as you point out, not the “big draw” items, so…
(I preordered it at the equivalent of £68.75 in the US, so not so awful, but I’m still considering cancelling it. I already would have if I could have put that money towards the FGTH “Pleasuredome” box.)
Please allow me to try and lessen your confusion Adam. I am not complaining, merely pointing out certain facts that I have observed regarding this very highly priced (in the UK at least) box set. Please learn to differentiate critical observations from complaining.
I pointed out that the vinyl is available separately but the Bluray is not. The DVD has not been advertised, nor were the other early packages that sold out, they were just in the store. The DVD has absolutely no information as to the contents – is it just the 5.1 mix or are there high-res stereo mixes as well? We don’t know. It has to bought blind and the postage costs are too high.
My criticisms are about the overall price versus the ‘new’ material within and the availability of contents outside the box plus the lack of information in certain areas and the comparison between this and the Immersion releases against how other bands have released new versions of albums with 5.1 mixes and the price comparisons.
I don’t think I am the only one who will be questioning the price, contents or the way it has been released.
When it is so vinyl heavy, which is taking up the majority of the cost, the non-vinyl portion just has to be released on it’s own for those not interested in the vinyl or wanting to pay for it.
I appreciate what you are saying about the DVD Adam but I am discussing the contents of the box specifically and I think the Bluray with it’s advertised contents should have been made available.
Thank you for clarifying. No need to spend an entire paragraph getting pedantic over the word “complain.” Cheer up! :-)
I think we know exactly what’s on the DVD: the 5.1 mix of the album. I think it’s fair to assume that it doesn’t have the high-resolution stereo or the “Marooned” music video, simply because if it did, they would have mentioned it.
I can’t speak to postage where you are, but the US Pink Floyd store wants $4 to ship the DVD, which is not unreasonable, and about $8.50 to ship the vinyl (a bit pricey, to be sure, but not outrageous). If it’s a lot worse for you, that’s unfortunate. (Then again, the vinyl itself is about £10 cheaper for the UK than the US, so there you go.)
I agree that in general, this box set is not the best bang for the buck, especially considering its critical status (I seem to hold it in much higher regard than most, possibly because I saw them on the tour for it). I was just trying to point out that the two things that you seemed to hold in highest regard, the LP and the 5.1, were in fact available outside the box. I perhaps did not fully appreciate the importance of the rest of the contents of the Bluray, or the fact that it’s a Bluray rather than a DVD, to you.
Fair?
I was not being pedantic, I was putting you straight on the difference between complaining and offering an observational criticism.
One problem that you mentioned is ‘assuming ‘ what is on the DVD, I don’t really want to have to assume before spending money. You could be right or wrong but we shouldn’t really have to guess, why not just put exactly what is on it and in what format. There is more information on this website regarding the contents than on the official Pink Floyd site.
Yes, I would rather have the option of buying the high-res stereo mix and the 5.1 on the Bluray separately, rather than buying a nondescript DVD which may or may not have the high-res stereo mix on it.
The Bluray has been produced and stuck in the box along with a whole load of vinyl. I don’t want vinyl, I want the Bluray and don’t want to have to pay for a load of vinyl to get it. As the Bluray exists it should have been released separately giving non-vinyl users a choice on how they want to spend their money. Why even deny us that option and offer just a DVD instead? Oh, and they are using this video of Marooned as some kind of lure, it has been available in full on Youtube and other sites since day one of the announcement, so an absolutely pointless addition in my book. Just release it as part of the promotional material online.
Yes your points were fair, but didn’t actually address the crux of my argument.
With all the super deluxe edition recent releases i find the price still a bit of a rip off, and they originally wanted 149 pounds!!! I would imagine they
won’t be flying out the door at that price, i’ll wait