I rebought the LaserDisc's of Madonna The Immaculate Collection and The Girlie Show because the DVD's were transcoded from the NTSC originals to DVD's component format with, what looks like, a cheap non-adaptive comb filter. The DVD's have dot crawl all over the image as well as cross-color rainbows. The audio has also been transferred poorly with hum and high frequency interference - the LaserDisc's sound wonderful. It's depressing they are done that way when professional comb filters are available that can produce results that look like true component.

Anyway, the NEC 3D comb filter in my EAD TheaterVision produces wider color bandwidth and an order of magnitude fewer artifacts than the DVD's have.

Hummm, I didn't think that the DVD release of Immaculate Collection was all that bad, at least not enough to warrant a LD transfer. More importantly the sound was done well with PCM. I had to go back and take a look, but I don't hear any problems with the audio on my system, sounds great, yeah the picture could have been a little bit better, but I've seen far worse, definitely heard far worse.
I can understand and agree that far too often these DVD releases are given less than a full professional handeling.

If you directly compare the LaserDisc to the DVD, you'll hear that the DVD has a harsh, tinny high-end that also has a subtle, gravely distortion to it - and higher background noise than the LaserDisc. It sounds like an analog audio stage was over driven at aome point and that 15kHz video monitor flyback was leaking into the audio. Vogue, both versions, are especially affected. The dot crawl on videos like Express Yourself is awful - Madonna's red lipstick, in the beginning when she's holding the black cat, is terrible - the low color resolution also causes her lipstick to bleed to the right of her lips. The worker beds have rainbows in their gratings. All of those problems are completely absent when I play the LaserDisc on my EAD TheaterVision - and the video of Vogue has no cross-color rainbows in the finely detailed or diagonal areas of the b/w image. Even the 2D comb filter in the Faroudja VP-100 hooked up to my LX-900 produces greater color resolution and less dot crawl than the DVD. As a side note, I hate that they used the album mix of the song for Express Yourself instead of the synth dance version that 'fits' the David Fincher directed video so much better - the recent DVD set has it, but the MPEG-2 compression is so awful it's painful to watch.

The Denon Japan pressing of Immaculate Collection LD is truly wonderful. I have one other Warner title pressed by Denon, Nat King Cole: Unforgettable, and it too is a sterling example of what a perfect pressing should be. I don't know how many American titles were pressed by Denon. The Sony Austria pressing of Girlie Show is beautiful too. Why, oh why, couldn't the US plants press with as high of standards as Denon Japan and Sony Austria?

I do like the 5.1 audio mix on The Girlie Show, but it too was taken from a digital D2 format Composite master tape and shows cross-color rainbows on Madonna's fishnet stockings during Erotica and there's lots of dot crawl during the really colorful parts of the show, like Disco Express Yourself.

An odd side-note - when The Girlie Show was shown live on HBO, I recorded it digitally to DAT tape (in the 32kHz LP mode since MTS stereo was limited to 15kHz) so I'd have a clean digital audio recording of it. I recently found the DAT tape and playing it I was surprised to discover that the opening "circus" music, before the pole dancer appears, is completely different than that on the LaserDisc and DVD. The HBO version on my DAT tape has snippets of Smokey Robinson's Tears Of A Clown in it - it's still circus-sounding, but very different. Weird that it was replaced for the home video releases. Since the HBO broadcast was live, the music I captured on DAT must have been what was actually used in the show while the LaserDisc and DVD are re-dubs.

The David Bowie 2 disc DVD video collection is how DVD's of Video's should be done - the Video's are all from first generation masters and transcoded with the very best adaptive Clean PAL comb filters with PCM audio that is crystal clear - even the PAL to NTSC conversion is state-of-the-art. The only bad audio is Young Americans which was taken from his appearance on The Dick Cavett Show and sounds like Quadruplex audio, which it probably was - it also comes with the full 20 minute mini-movie of Jazzin' For Blue Jean as a bonus and other bonus clips. The Pioneer Artists LaserDisc of Bowie videos looks awful in comparison to the DVD set - and also has all kinds of errors, like mono audio on videos such as Ashes To Ashes (which is full stereo on the 5-inch CDV and DVD). The 2 disc Duran Duran DVD set is another sterling example of videos on DVD - its only drawback is that, with all the Easter eggs and such, the videos to Lonely In Your Nightmare, Waiting For The Nightboat and My Own Way are not present - the Pioneer Artists LaserDisc is the only way to own those videos.

Most Madonna stuff is on DVD. Right off I just see the Like a Virgin Tour, not on DVD and Who's that Girl, live in Japan not on DVD. I have several of Madonna's LDs. I got them from the same seller. They were well taken care of.

In those days concerts weren't filmed with high standards like movies or HD like now, so don't they just transfer from the same tape master? I wouldn't think the DVD's of these would be a big improvement other than a digital conversion and storage.

It's curious but, almost every The Cure VHS have a Laserdisc edition (some of them were edited in LD a couple years after VHS release), but none of them have a DVD issue. Curious, because The Cure were really big in the 80's/90's because their videos. The only DVD realease is Greatest Hits with some of their videos taken from the VHS edition (very poor, almost no remaster at all).
Special mention (as is stated up there) of the Best of Bowie DVD, the quality is really awesome; like the audio of Ziggy Stardust (the movie), not with the video (LD looks better for me).
Regards

I hate that The Cure Staring at The Sea isn't available on DVD in that form - instead, as you said, it's all chopped up. Same with We're all Devo - Criterion ruined it when they did their LaserDisc and that's all that is on DVD now.

The double disc Duran Duran DVD is like the Bowie DVD - really amazing picture and sound, plus multiple versions of each video including the Dancing On The Valentine ones and the 17 minute New Moon On Monday mini-movie - plus the short version of Girls On Film. Like Bowie, I didn't know the videos could look so good. And they all have superb LPCM sound.