VHS formats & SACD

[Birgitte Jorgensen <bj@kemmunet.net.mt>]

>Anne M. Marble wrote:
>I was just at Amazon.com, and I realized that Sony's Glenn Gould videos
are
>going for $9.98 each. (NTSC format only -- my apologies to list members
in
>England and Europe.)

These are indeed good prices, in anticipation (one hopes) of imminent
release of the tapes on DVD. However, I'd like to point out to fellow
listmembers in Europe, and elsewhere outside North America, that many
VCRs manufactured within the last five years or so, even the cheapest
models, will play NTSC as well as PAL/Secam, so go ahead and order
videos from Amazon.com or from the CBC and NFB. (The unfortunate pattern
of regional differences in DVD formats is also disappearing with most
new players now being multi-regional.)

By the way, another good online source of Gould books (not tapes) is the
Canadian bookstore, Indigo.ca, which offers, at least in my experience,
excellent and very fast service for overseas shipments, often outpacing
Amazon. While I remain a loyal and longtime customer of Amazon, I fear
they may be evolving into something of an e-commerce behemoth.

With regard to last week's postings on technical aspects of the Gould
recordings, has anyone had the opportunity to hear the new Super Audio
Compact Disc (SACD) version of the 1981 Goldbergs, recently issued by
Sony and available from CDNow?

Birgitte Jorgensen