The very first time I saw footage of this concert, it was with my mother and father while they were channel surfing and stopped on a pledge drive on one of those public television channels, and it had gotten to the last few songs (I think from 'Brain Damage' to the end). I thought they were all right, but when I started to hear the guitar solo at the end of 'Comfortably Numb,' I found I had forgotten to breathe for almost a minute. It is, without a doubt, the greatest and most euphoric rendition of that song David Gilmour ever did and the acoustics of the theater make it incredibly clear. It's even better than the studio version off "The Wall." The rest of the concert, especially performances like 'High Hopes,' 'One of ThEse Days,' 'Learning to Fly,' and 'Run Like Hell' are incredible and I cannot get enough of it. Bravo, Pink Floyd.

I'm a great PF fan and I was looking forward to see this DVD. I will start with the positive: Disc 2 is amazing, Dark Side is my favorite all time album and the version here is pretty good (not as good as the record, but what in the world is as good as the dark side record?), and the solo in Comfortably Numb is amazing (the only true "better then the original" moment in the set).But sadly, there's also Disc 1... Shine On is a masterpiece and it's played nicely and One of These Days is always a treat (sadly the only song played from pre-dark side times), but the rest of it is just BAD. A Momentary lapse of a reason and The Division Bell are just very average albums, and the band play too much of them! I ended up skipping all those songs because they have nothing of the beauty earlier PF records had. And then, there's Another Brick In The Wall, which has a good solo but it is still a very very bad song.And another thing, I don't like the style of the show. Too showy and grandiose; too much use of lightning, background movies, special effects and so on, and you can barely see the band. In the CN solo, there are hardly any closeups on the guitar which is a shame.So my suggestion: Get Remember That Night by Dave and Rick instead, it is just much better.

It's terrific to see Pink Floyd playing well together in their mega-dynamic way here in the PULSE concert, now remastered wonderfully for a DVD set. They go through many of their hits, most notably all of Dark Side of the Moon, and seeing the band go through Shine on You Crazy Diamond is as amazing as it gets from the group (a great opener that is hard to top). And overall the core of the musicianship of David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright do gel together at times. But then there's the thing of it being such a HUGE event live, lasers and special videos on a big screen behind them included, that they have to work that much more harder to keep up with the theatrics. They're up to task, but there's something missing from it all too, and not just the obvious (Roger Waters, who is now doing his own version of this show more or less on his Dark Side tour). Maybe it's me putting it too much into perspective; seeing the film that preceded this one some twenty years before, Live at Pompeii, PULSE isn't as forceful and tremendous even on such a scale as playing in Earl's Court to who knows how many people.I guess this is my way of saying that the concert, for me at least, is not a flawless one like Pompeii comes close to (even if that is, by turns, not in the same style of performance as in PULSE). And in comparison with many of the classic Floyd songs of the 70s, the newer work (with a couple of exceptions like Learning to Fly and Keep Talking) sort of falls up short, with a song like High Hopes one that I fast-forward past. But this aspect of the concert is not very detrimental, just a minor liability for more die-hard old-school Floyd fans. In terms of just capturing the band live, and the band with its immense ensemble of back-up players and singers, the director gets it all down without a hitch. If it also has a little added historical value to it too, it may also be because, unless something happens in the next few years (and in 2006 both Gilmour, with the occasional Mason and Wright in tow, and Waters went on their own solo tours), this might be the last time Pink Floyd are seen live on video.

What is all the hype about?!?! Out of all the Pink Floyd concerts I have on DVD (Pink Floyd – Live at Pompeii, Roger Waters – In the Flesh Live, Roger Waters – The Wall live in Berlin, Pink Floyd - Pulse) this one is at the bottom of the list… and doesn't come close to comparing to these others. I searched far and wide to get my hands on this rare, limited release DVD. After watching it I can't believe the undeserved hype it has received on this and other review websites. Here's the main problem (among others): Hey, I'm trying to watch my favorite band perform live… could you please get that obnoxious giant circular video screen out of my line of vision!!! That's right folks – throughout this concert footage there are two main camera perspectives: One is a wide shot that is so distant in order to frame the gigantic circular video screen that you can't really see the band, and the other is more close up. But wait there's a catch. In the close up footage the producers have decided to superimpose that giant circular video screen again. It's baaaack. When viewing my monitor during these scenes I estimate that David Gilmour gets to occupy about 1/10th of the overall image. In fact, most of the time he is literally partially cut out and hidden behind this thing. It's really bizarre. In a nutshell, it's as if the producers are demanding that we watch their 'cool' film clips instead of the band. These clips run the gamut from the usual psychedelics to actual newsreel footage (some of which include images of George Bush, Bill Clinton, Vladamire Putin, Tony Blair etc. - Gee, thats something I look forward to in my Pink Floyd concert experience). YAWN! In all fairness the camera does occasionally go up on stage and roam amongst the band. But even here the cinematographers were trying to be really fancy and used blurring effects, overexposure and monochrome lighting and it just didn't work well. When the credits rolled I couldn't remember 'seeing' this band. The performances are lackluster and I'm sorry to say that that includes Gilmour. The exception being whenever Gilmour does go to town on his famous leads – all of which he does amazingly. But when the accompanying lead guitarist takes the spotlight he takes to many liberties (see Another Brick in the Wall when he decides to do some Eddie Van Halen-esq fret tapping... c'mon). Unlike other Floyd concerts I own, here the backup female vocalists don't get a lot of attention. Perhaps that's not so bad because also unlike other Floyd concerts I own, here they are unremarkable.I must agree with others who have reviewed this concert and say it is an awesome production. The light show, the pyrotechnics... amazing. But that's not why I bought this DVD. As concert performance and as an overall concert experience captured on film, this is a huge disappointment. Granted, the encore does indeed build to a stunning climax, but if you're a huge Floyd'o'phile like I am, be prepared to endure some frustration to get there.