I gave this a good listen from beginning to end, and my conclusions haven't changed, this is a muddy mess. There is virtually nothing discrete about the 5.1 mix. I walked around to all 5 speakers and had a hard time distinguishing anything different between the channels for most of the recording. Vocals are perhaps more prominent in the center channel, but they bleed to all 5 channels, as do all of the instruments. On a couple of tracks, I could maybe hear Jon's vocals more prominent in the center and fronts and Chris's in the surrounds, but it's very difficult to distinguish since everything is distorted and sounds tinny. For the surround mix, it gets an F. In fact, I switched to the mono track at several points, and I probably preferred it to the pseudo surround sound mix.
There were a couple of moments when I thought the sound wasn't half-bad. Howe's guitar during the Clap, and parts of Wakeman's solo during Close to the Edge were not great, but at least distinguishable. It's when the entire band is playing that you really know how bad this is. There is also virtually no low-end, or much of a high-end. Percussion has no punch. The overall sound is hollow and highly distorted.
For extras, there is an hour-long documentary that I haven't watched yet, and there are a couple of versions of Beginnings that I liked. Although not outstanding, the SQ was slightly better. One short version has Howe playing 5 instruments simultaneously, and an extended version with Howe playing along with Patrick Moraz on the harpsichord that was interesting. Oh, and you get 4 really nice Roger Dean artwork cards!
If I were to rank this on a scale of 1 to 10, and comparing this to a few other concert BDs, as a reference, I would place PT's Anesthetize and TH Stop Making Sense up there at least a 9. Gilmour's Remember That Night slightly lower, maybe an 8, along with Symphonic Live. I have a couple of Yes concerts on DVD, Keys to Ascension and House of Blues that are Dolby Digital that I would rate about a 6. I would be hard-pressed to give the Yessongs BD more than a 2, maybe a 3 if I was being generous.
For historical significance, and since I didn't have the DVD, I guess owning this BD is not a total waste of money, but I can't foresee taking this out of the media cabinet again anytime soon other than to watch the documentary.
If you already own the DVD, I can't see how this could be much of an improvement, and certainly not worth the cost to upgrade unless you just want to own this on Blu-Ray format, or you want the extras and a few nice artwork cards.
edit: I forgot to add one other item. The disc wouldn't load on my Oppo 93, after spinning for about 15 seconds, it gave me an error message. It did play from my PS3. I don't think using the PS3 versus the Oppo had any significant effect on the SQ of the DTS-HD MA audio since in both cases, the audio is sent digitally via HDMI to my Denon 3808ci. Just thought I should warn anyone thinking of buying this that owns an Oppo that a firmware update may be required to play.
