Dire Straits: Money For Nothing (1985) [080 130-2]

Being a huge fan of Dire Straits it was hard to pass up "Money For Nothing" (1985) [080 130-2] on a 5 inch CDV. It was the first 5" CDV title I have ever owned. It was found on eBay last year wrongly listed and with no picture either. I quickly tracked its information from its UPC number that was given in the listing, which indeed indicated it was a CDV. So, after happily using the Buy-it now feature I bought it for 4 Euros. It arrived well-packed and was in practically mint condition.

I was weary of the 5 inch titles as I know that most are rotters so I was expecting the worst naturally. But when I stuck into my player the video instantly started without any speckles and played perfectly to the end. I did notice some very slight clicks in the digital audio sound but had to really concentrate hard to hear it. So, it had only had some very slight rot that only affected the sound while leaving the picture untouched. The video quality is very sharp indeed but slightly grainy looking. The colors are a bit over-saturated to my taste which seems to magnify the graininess. But to have one of their most popular videos in the 5 inch CDV format makes that fact easy to forget.

The gold-colored PAL disc is from the infamous PDO pressing plant in the UK and contains one video that starts at track 4 upon insertion of the disc into the player. After the video is finished the player moves to track one to play the following three audio only tracks: "Money for Nothing" (8:24), "One World (3:35) and "So Far Away" (5:05). It was a nice touch that the long version of "Money for Nothing" was selected to open the CD audio portion of the disc, which at the time had only been available on the CD and cassette format while the LP version had shaved off one minute and twenty seconds of the song to make the tracks fit onto the LP.

These 5" CDV discs also work beautifully in a standard CD audio player, although only playing the audio tracks which are in a standard audio CD format. As far as I am aware, any laserdisc player that is capable of reading audio CD's has the ability to also read the CDV titles.