After dropping a hint late last month that he had a "gift" in store for fans, Nine Inch Nails [ tickets ] anchorman Trent Reznor today (01/07) revealed a treasure trove of raw, HD video footage shot last month during the tail end of the band's recently completed North American tour.

"The internet is full of surprises these days," Reznor said in a message posted at NIN's website. "I was contacted by a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives who SOMEHOW managed to film a substantial amount (over 400 GB!) of raw, unedited HD footage from three separate complete shows of our Lights in the Sky tour. Security must have been lacking at these shows because the quality of the footage is excellent.

"If any of you could find a LINK to that footage, I'll bet some enterprising fans could assemble something pretty cool," Reznor continued in his message, which, in fact, contained a link to a thread on the band's official messageboard where further details and download links for the video footage are posted.

"Oh yeah, you didn't hear this from me," Reznor said in closing.

Reznor's tongue-in-cheek tone suggests that the footage actually originated within the NIN camp. The three shows during which the footage was shot--Dec. 5 in Victoria, British Columbia; Dec. 7 in Portland, OR; and Dec. 12 in Sacramento, CA--all took place in the wake of a disgruntled Dec. 4 announcement Reznor posted on his site, in which he said that his plans to make a major concert film from footage to be shot near the end of the tour had been waylaid by "a certain record company that owns some of the song rights." He also stated at the time that plans included selling the film in DVD and BluRay formats.

With those plans now scrapped, it appears Reznor has once again chosen to give his material away for free; the tour during which the aforementioned HD footage was shot was in support of NIN's most recent studio album, "The Slip," which Reznor released for free via his website last May.