Generally, when I think about it I'd say it's too much of an opportunity for Beatles product to not do something sometime in the future. As far as I can tell the DVD set isn't even in print anymore and I find this "I already have it so they shouldn't do it" to be a bit selfish. You've got a book, a trilogy of Albums all 3LP and you've got the movies if they did an HD or UHD restoration that would make a hell of a box set, a hell of an expensive box set but a nice box set. They don't need to change anything. CED? VHD? Or an Audio only version.
If they want people to buy it again they certainly need to update or expand it. For music that's played regularly, a quality upgrade will suffice, but for a longform video that most folks will watch only very occasionally, there needs to be more of a reason to purchase it one more time.
This is also assuming everyone already has a copy, Anthology came out in the 90s, you can still pick up the CDs but I don't think anything else is available. I'm sure there are extras etc to add to it, Perhaps a new mix or a new chapter to talk about what has happened with The Beatles story since Anthology came out. What I mean is they don't need to re-edit the documentaries to do an extended edition for example.
Of course there are lots of folks who don't have it, but those who already do would be a major (if not the biggest) part of the potential market. I absolutely think it would have to be reworked and expanded as there is purposely no "epilogue" or update component to the documentary other than the 90's sessions (on the bonus disk),
If you look at the NTSC dvd, you can spot the downconversion artefacts, like frame blending and moires pattern. They've only adjusted the speed of 24p music.
I went back and examined the Anthology DVDs and it appears you are correct about the frame rate conversion, except 24 fps film segments (such as from Let It Be) were converted to 50i on the PAL dvd, with no speed change (Euro pulldown?). The 1990s segments such as the interviews are at 25 fps. This is converted to 60i on the NTSC dvd, with no speed change. Even the US TV segments appear to be converted from a 50i master to 60i, which is disappointing.
My suspicion is a lot of this stuff was quietly remastered in HD by Apple Corps in the last 10 years. Certain segments of the Anthology interviews were shown in the 2011 Martin Scorsese Living in the Material World George Harrison documentary, and it all looked fine to me: no conversions, no motion artifacts, no weirdness. I'm still mulling over the shots of the underground Apple Vaults on the CBS 60 Minutes interview with Peter Jackson some weeks ago. That's the motherload down there -- tons and tons of Beatles-related material precisely organized on hundreds of feet of shelves.
There's been a bit of talk about the logistics of the Anthology series on BluRay before here: Will Apple will do anything new The Beatles Anthology? | Steve Hoffman Music Forums Key points in upgrading the current SD tape version of Anthology: The Threetles interviews and jams were all shot on 16mm and would need to be scanned again for 4K. Other elements would need to be rescanned and upscaled. As confrimed by user @emkay , the Anthology series was edited in Avid, meaning you could use the original DLT tapes (were the editing information is backed up) and replace the elements with upgraded ones.
I'm still waiting to find a used DVD set out in the wild... I know they're out there on Amazon and eBay and the like, but I'm waiting for one to show up while I'm out thrifting.
I'm guessing that Apple is gonna release something along this line in 2025, which is the 30th anniversary of the original project.
Sure. I will probably never watch it more than once. It would be upscaled as I recall at least for the video footage. For the film it would need to be rescanned and reassembled.
For this reason, I doubt we'd see a blu ray. It would be such a painstaking, prolonged and costly process to redo all that disparate footage.
I have both as well and I paid more at the time for the VHS box than the DVD box! it's all according to what the contents will box in the BD box...extras? yes!
