Beatles best album and concert dvd?

Abbey Road is the best IMO! And I've been listening to the Beatles since 1964!

Why do you want to use the Beatles' music for background listening? Such a waste! Try instead Brian Eno's Music For Airports. 

It's difficult to say what is the best Beatles album because they're all different. From 63 to 69 the band went through amazing changes (and hairstyles). Each album reflected this with increasing sophistication and studio time.

It's a very long and winding road from Please Please Me to Abbey Road and it's hard to believe it's the same band only 6 years later.

In general terms you could say there's the Beatles before and after hallucinogens - basically the years of Beatlemania 63-66 up to and including Rubber Soul.

This is still the favourite period (and the lasting image) for many people when their lyrics were straightforward and generally upbeat. The 1964 A Hard Days Night album might be the peaking of this Beatlemania phase.

From Revolver onwards their music become increasingly more experimental and introspective and this probably peaks with the trippy Sergeant Pepper (Lucy in the Sky, Benefit of Mr Kite, Within Without You, Day in the Life) and the White album (Revolution 9, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Long, Long, Long etc).

My personal favourite is Abbey Road because it's the one I'm most likely to play without skipping from start to finish.

Side 2 (on vinyl) for me is a good a side of music as there has ever been, and side 1 is not too bad either.

As for the concert/ touring years (62-66), I think Ron Howard's Eight Days a Week DVD is great place to start. 

Beatles '65.  They sound fresh and wonderful. They're having fun. They may not be experimenting yet, but the songwriting is ever more secure & natural.  Yeah, the stereo quality is 1960's clumsy and prehistoric, but the overall sound quality of my bought-the-first-week-it-came-out Capitol Records disc is a pleasure -- fresh, clear & punchy.

  yeti42 yeah.. I've always kinda thought Beatles fanatics were really more nostalgic and like to think that because a band was a "first" that makes them better. I never fallen in love with most of their music and didn't / don't understand the hype... But I see myself kinda coming around..

Songs I don't like and don't get why others like them:
-Strawberry Fields Forever
-Norwegian Wood
-Tomorrow Never Knows
-Lucy in the sky with Diamonds -Happiness Is a Warm Gun 
Those are just from the Rolling Stone top 50.. However, as I was reading through the top 50, there's alot more than I gave them credit for.