Anyone Own The ETV/Promo Only Platinum Series ?

I have a set that I bought at a convention years ago when people thought they were legal. It was great. Covered a lot of styles and have some drops and samples. At the time it was pretty up to date, if you were doing backyard parties and even some weddings it was almost all you needed and it was a outstanding base to your library. Off the top of my head I think disc 4 was one of my faves.

Big Dan said:

Today you can stay legit a lot cheaper with iTunes, Amazon, and Google -- 99 cent singles. You're not stuck paying $5-7 for a single or $15-$20 for an album with two maybe three playable songs on it.

That being said I know a lot of newbies take the shortcut of buying a hard drive full of music or ripping a boatload of songs off YouTube. It's unfortunate but these clowns really aren't competition to any serious DJ worth his salt. These are the guys working backyard parties for basically beer money. The vast majority of ODJT'ers wouldn't even consider a gig like that.

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the right party I would work for FREE BEER

I've worked back yard parties but I still charged my normal rate for 4 hours

Big Dan said:

Today you can stay legit a lot cheaper with iTunes, Amazon, and Google -- 99 cent singles. You're not stuck paying $5-7 for a single or $15-$20 for an album with two maybe three playable songs on it.

That being said I know a lot of newbies take the shortcut of buying a hard drive full of music or ripping a boatload of songs off YouTube. It's unfortunate but these clowns really aren't competition to any serious DJ worth his salt. These are the guys working backyard parties for basically beer money. The vast majority of ODJT'ers wouldn't even consider a gig like that.

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Sounds familiar.

Still buy my albums $10.00-25.00 and DVD's.
..

steve149 said:

And for Video guys, he's got a 33 DVD set of music videos: ETV Vital Classic Complete DVD Set - Vol's - 1 to 33 -ON SALE!!! Plus Extras! | eBay

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So, I purchased that set as well. Overall it was a worthwhile purchase. Where it really shines is (1) quality of 90's material and (2) rare oldies. The video quality on the 90s stuff is fantastic and rivals SmashVision/VJ-Pro, and definitely beats Promo Only's 90s remasters. BUT, you have to know how to properly deinterlace and encode from DVD sources (PROPERLY being the key word here - I can share my process sometime). The other strong point would be some of the oldies that you simply can't find anywhere else, even if the quality isn't great. I don't know of another place to find Shotgun by Junior Walker and the All Stars, for example. This set has a lip sync'ed performance from Hollywood A Go-Go (along with many others from that show).

The bad points:

1. Audio - the ETV guys appear to have had no clue how to set audio levels. The audio quality is fine, but the volume/gain levels are ridiculously low. These videos will sound very quiet next to SmashVision/Xtendamix files.

2. Tape transfers -- In a lot of cases, the oldies they have weren't necessary transferred well, or they were transferred from poor source copies. Steve from ETV told me on the phone years ago when I bought this set that they used U-Matic tapes to remaster for most, not kinescopes/films. That being said, I'd rather have a mediocre copy than NO copy. Also, ETV didn't replace TV show audio for their videos. Back to the Jr Walker example, I used Adobe Premiere to superimpose studio audio over the crappy TV show audio. It was tricky because the TV show edited the song down for length, so I had to recycle some footage of the dancers to fill in video for one of the verses that was edited out.

Is there a track listing somewhere for the Platinum Series? I had heard about years back, but it was always talked about like a unicorn. I'm not as interested in actually buying the set as just knowing what was on it.

Jim Davis said:

I don't know of another place to find Shotgun by Junior Walker and the All Stars, for example.

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Unless it's a special version, it's right here: Amazon.com: Motown: The Classic Years (Original Version): Various artists: MP3 Downloads

Albatross said:

Is there a track listing somewhere for the Platinum Series? I had heard about years back, but it was always talked about like a unicorn. I'm not as interested in actually buying the set as just knowing what was on it.

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Here you go:
platinumseries.pdf

Albatross said:

Unless it's a special version, it's right here: Amazon.com: Motown: The Classic Years (Original Version): Various artists: MP3 Downloads

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We were talking about music videos...

Jim Davis said:

We were talking about music videos...

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Ah, my apologies. I was skimming the thread and jumped right over that piece.

Yes, ETV collection isn't up to the same standards as promo only just like Jim said. I brought the collection when ETV was going out of business so I didn't pay much. So in that respect it was nice to have but playing a ETV video at a event required a major changes in the mixer setting vs P.O. Videos. They do have some video I have never seen anywhere else. Especially at the time when they were released .

I have most of the ETV stuff on VHS which was the original media. Who did the conversion and how was the media converted to DVD is my big question. I've seen some supposedly factory generated ETV video discs whose material quality was far less acceptable than what I got from ripping the original VHS tapes.