Beatles Films

Enjoying movies at home was made possible when the BetaMax tapes were introduced in 1975, and VHS tapes a year later in 1976. In the early 1980s, movies were offered in various formats for home consumption and the Beatles movies were no exception. Their "cinema-only" films were reproduced on portable tapes and digital discs, and sold in Canada as early as 1982 with "The Compleat Beatles" documentary.

The sections below list Beatles movies available in Canada, on BetaMax, VHS, LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray. Many Beatles movies on videotape and DVD formats were released and pressed in Canada, but the archive below also lists USA and EU pressings when they were sold in Canadian stores as regular stock copies; as a rule of thumb, the regular "basic issue" was usually a Canadian pressing, but special sets, some reissues, or any other "non-normal" offers were usually imported pressings, while LaserDiscs and Blu-rays have always been "import-only". For clarity, the list below identifies the provenance, but also marks Canadian pressings in BLACK and imported pressings in GREY.

BetaMax and VHS Tapes

A few videotapes below were produced in Canada, but tapes were mostly imported from the USA, especially when packaged in collection box sets. Both are listed here since they were offered side by side in record stores around the country, but their provenance is listed under each entry to ensure easy identification of the Canadian "pressings". Most entries below are for VHS tapes, but BetaMax versions most likely also exist for almost all of them and will be added to the list as they are documented.

CEDs and Laser Discs

LaserDiscs were a newer slightly more niche product that was introduced a few years later. Despite the much higher quality (double the resolution of tapes, with CD-quality audio), the product remained a fringe market mainly because of the high cost of the playback equipment. The format eventually made way for the much more accessible and popular DVD in the 1990s (see sections below).

Beatles films and movies found on VHS tapes were also all made available on LaserDisc, but these have never been produced in Canada, and were imported from the USA. They are listed here because they were available in record stores in Canada, but should not be considered as a "Canadian pressing".

DVDs

As mentioned earlier, most "regular" Beatles movies on the DVD format were pressed in Canada, but the archive below also lists USA and EU pressings when they were sold in Canadian stores as regular stock copies (most recently pressed at one or two single factories for worldwide distribution). Again, as a rule of thumb, the regular "basic issue" was usually a Canadian pressing, but special sets were usually imported pressings. For clarity, the list below identifies the provenance, but also marks Canadian pressings in black and imported pressings in grey.

Anthology DVD Canadian Poster, 2003.

Blu-ray Discs

Blu-ray is a newer video disc format that allows much more data stored on the disc, and therefore allows higher resolution streams for a higher quality result. Blu-ray issues of Beatles movies offered in Canada were not usually pressed in Canada, but were almost exclusively imported from the USA or EU. They are listed here because they were offered in Canadian stores alongside other regular Canadian offers as "the regular available stock copy".

Other Miscellaneous Films

This section covers other Canadian Beatles films that were not necessarily distributed to the public, but that were still documented as being Canadian in origin and of interest to the content of this archive. They do not consider private home-made film, but rather "officially unofficial" film commissioned or recorded in a more professional manner. The first example below lists an 8mm film that was recorded in a higher quality than most, and where the sound track was most likely taken directly from the soundboard, highly improving the sound quality compared to other regular 8mm films.