What comes in 1080p high definition video with 5.1 surround sound, spans 3 continents, 4 languages, and takes a team of dozens – including 5 specialist teams and a network of thousands – a total of 12 months to complete? That would be The Gift, which is 3 DVD’s worth of NIN concert video assembled from source material released by NIN, professionally edited, and color corrected and authored. To be clear about this, the amazing thing about the project is that it’s not an official NIN release; this was assembled primarily by rabid and obsessive fans. Back in January of this year, Trent Reznor joked (see original text here) that a “mysterious, shadowy group of subversives” had somehow gotten their hands on 400 GB’s of raw HD concert footage and that it may be out there on the internet somewhere. Well, the fans took the cue and worked with NIN crew to create what appears to be some mind-blowingly high-quality concert material. And the cost? Unbelievably, it’s free. They’re even soliciting people to provide free physical DVD’s to technophobes that are incapable of figuring out the download options! We mentioned last year how Trent Reznor had ingeniously brought us back into the fan fold with his gift of “Ghosts”, but this video material may really take the concept of “free” as a marketing tool to new heights. You be the judge. The YouTube clip below is promising; we’re downloading the torrent as this article is being posted, so will probably do a follow up next week.

It’s probably silly to watch this in the size presented below, go ahead and go full screen. It’s HD!