VBW have just announced a DVD production of the show in the Raimund Theater. This is the announcement:

"Für alle Fans unseres neuen RAIMUND THEATER-Musicals RUDOLF gibt
es tolle Neuigkeiten: Nächste Woche am Freitag, den 19. und am
Samstag, den 20. Juni werden Kamerateams im Haus sein, um die Show
für eine DVD-Produktion aufzuzeichnen. In diesen Tagen ist daher
auch Regisseur David Leveaux in Wien, um die Show auf diese
wichtigen Aufnahmen "vorzubereiten"."

You can also find the announcement at http://www.kultur-channel.at/

*Jumps with joy* :D :D :D
I'm so pre-ordering as soon as it's for sale!!!! :D :D

I'm afraid we have to wait until Christmas ... unfortunately don't know which year.

RUDOLF DVD comes out September 11th! Region free ;)
Pre-Orders open at SoM and VBW shop

Fantastic! Though I wish, selfishly, that it included English subtitles. Maybe someone can fan-sub it at some point.

There's not much info on it so far. Perhaps it will have english subs or extras, we'll have to wait until closer to the release to know for sure. But hey...it's better than nothing, and I'm sure fans will buy it and fan-translate it into english.

I'm very inclined to guess that the DVD won't have neither extras nor subtitles. In amazon.de it says 1 DVD so extras aren't included for sure. And I think subs either. Pitty.

anyway, it's also available for Pre-order at Amazon.de

For american fans: BEWARE. Although the DVD is region free, it's in PAL format, so it may give some troubles playing in some American DVD players that don't support PAL format.

Just got an Email from SoM about the Rudolf DVD.
According to them the DVD won't be released on September 11 due to technical reasons. It was postponed to end September. :angry:

Meanwhile at the VBW shop a new poster for the show is available (aparently replaced the eagle+heart one.)

Wow! I am soo getting one of those!

amazon.de now announces October 2nd as the release date...
So much for end September... :angry:

It looks like they've added rings to their merchandise set as well, inscribed with "In Liebe vereint bis in den Tod". I hadn't noticed them before on the souvenir page, anyway.

Oh yes I forgot to mention that along with the new posters.

And for those who don't understand german, it's carved "In Love united until Death" ;)

My sources say that the dvd will use the new poster art for the cover. :)

That will be a pretty cover then :)
I'm now patiently waiting for it...along with the Monte Cristo CD since I've them both pre-ordered at SoM :lol:

Important Update!
Just want to let you know that I have just received a message that the DVD is available FROM TODAY at http://musical-shop.de/details.asp?Artikelnr=10359
So, if you are interested, ask Mr. Paulick if he can really ship the item.

Today was the old release date, before they pushed it back. If anyone finds out that musical-shop does have them ready to ship (or confirms that they don't), please post an update.

It's a newsletter from musical-shop.de, sent today, original text is "Die LIVE-DVD aus dem Raimund Theater! ab heute lieferbar"
Contact is info@musical-shop.de

Yeah I got the newsletter too, but since this time I bought the DVD at SoM I don't know. I'll try to find out if someone ordered from there and what info they were given.

The best way is to contact the store though. If they had the newsletter and website pre-programmed it was all authomatic.

I wrote in, and just heard back... they don't have the DVD today, but will be offering it when it is released (they said end of Sept/early Oct). We now return to our regularly scheduled programming...

amazon.de has a new DVD cover on the following URL
http://www.amazon.de/Rudolf-Affaire-Mayerl...53133726&sr=8-1
It's similar to the new poster posted by Fantasma da Opera.
But if you click to enlarge the cover, you get the old cover.
Rather strange!

Yeah I guess they didn't replaced the flash animation yet ;) Peter posted the new DVD cover on Frank's site some time ago already though :P

I have an update on the DVD...

As I understand it, they are going to go ahead and release it without English subtitles at first. This should happen on 2 October. It will include a scene by scene synopsis in both German and English, and also have a letter from Frank in English. I don't believe it will have any special features. It will run 150 minutes, and will be regionless and in PAL format.

Then what they want to do, is to add subtitles to the second printing of the disc, making it a new edition. IF a second printing happens - which is quite possible, but not guaranteed. I also pointed out that PAL may be a big issue for some of us in the States (if you don't know what that means, and you don't know that you can play PAL videos, you probably can't). That comment was passed on to the producers and they may look into doing the second edition in NTSC (which does play in the States). I can't make any promises about that, or anything else, but these matters have been heard at least.

I'll pass on any further information as I have it.

Best,
Peter

Thanks for the update Peter.

It's a pitty they're going go move ahead without the subtitles. I think it's a bad move...'cause basicly all the people will end up buying it as soon as it's released, including the english-speakers who really want to see the show and I don't believe they'll buy a new edition just for the subtitles, specially when there's a scene by scene synopsis. I won't for sure. As much as I love the show, I really have no use for 2 equal DVDs containing exactly the same things with the exception of the subtitles, specially when I can understand 90% of what's being said. The only reason I would consider buying a new one would be if they did a Collectors edition with tons of extras (read "more than the Elisabeth DVD") like Edward suggested: making of, behind the scenes, interviews with cast and creators, photogalleries, etc etc etc
Also that uncertainty will probably also refrain english speakers from buying the DVD. It's not cheap to have things shipped to the USA and they'll most certainly don't want to pay twice for the same DVD.
In the end, I think it's the sales that won't increase =|

Just my thoughts on this ;)

A valid set of thoughts. I mainly wanted to share all the information that I could on this, specifically so that people can make an informed decision on whether they want to buy the first release or wait for a while. The second release may have a few special features as well - but probably not tons. (I was also told that they're hoping it could happen "soon" - though that's also still up in the air). We'll just have to see how all of this goes.

By the way, Amazon.de has now a list of the song order:

AKT 1
01 Hofburg, Oktober 1888
02 K.K.Hofburgtheater
VORHANG AUF
03 WIE JEDER ANDRE MANN Prolog
04 Kabinettsaal
05 DU WILLST NICHT HÖREN
06 Ringstrasse
07 EIN HÜBSCHER KRIEG
08 MARYS LIED
09 Hofburg Appartement von Rudolf und Stephanie
10 DER BALL
11 Salon Apokalypse
12 SOVIEL MEHR
13 Taaffes Büro
14 DIE STRAHLENDE ZUKUNFT (really looking forward to this one)
15 Redaktion Wiener Tagblatt
16 ZEIT ZU HANDELN
17 WOHIN FÜHRT MEIN WEG
18 Eislaufverein/TRALALA
19 IN DEM MOMENT ALS ICH DICH SAH
20 Konferenzzimmer
21 Prater / VERTRAU IN UNS
22 VERTRAU IN UNS

AKT 2
23 Schlafzimmer / DIE FÄDEN IN DER HAND
24 DU BLEIBST BEI MIR
25 Hofburg
26 WIE JEDER ANDRE MANN
27 Salon Apokalypse II
28 MEIN SÜSSER HELD
29 MUT ZUR TAT
30 Ausstellung
31 DER WEG IN DIE ZUKUNFT
32 DIE LIEBE LENKT
33 Augustinerkirche
34 Taaffes Büro II
35 WENN DAS SCHICKSAL DICH EREILT
36 Larischs Appartement
37 SOVIEL MEHR Reprise
38 ZEIT ZU HANDELN Reprise
39 DU BIST MEINE WELT
40 Mayerling / NUR LIEBE ZÄHLT Reprise

EDITED: Got an email from SoM about Rudolf. Here's the info:

Dear customers,
best wishes from Germany,

we are sorry to inform you that the DVD RUDOLF, which has been released two days ago, has some technical problems.

All customers, who will receive their preordered copy in the next few days, will automatically receive a free DVD Rudolf in about 3 - 4 weeks as soon as a new edition of that DVD without these technical problems will have been released.

You don't have to send back the DVD with the technical problem - you can just keep it.

Some foreign customers will receive their delivery without the DVD - Rudolf (there is a note in your package) These customers will automatically receive the missing DVD Rudolf in about 3 - 4 weeks as soon as a new edition of that DVD without these technical problems will have been released.

Another part of preorders could be stopped - we will ship these, after the new edition of the DVD-Rudolf is available. These preorders have not been charged yet.

To check out if your order has already been shipped or not, just sign in at www.soundofmusic.de and check your account.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

Best wishes from Germany
Sound Of Music
Germany
_______________________________________________________

Just to warn ;) I won't receive mine since I have it pre-ordered along with Monte Christo, but for those who might...
(they could take the chance and ADD the subtitles...after all they'll have to fix and re-print the entire DVDs...)

I have been checking with MG-Sound about things, and they confirm that this is a skipping issue, and they will try to get corrected copies out in a few weeks. They already found the problem itself.

It doesn't sound like they are going to add subtitles right now, in the interest of getting this out as soon as possible. If I hear anything different about this, I'll pass it on.

They also mentioned that the problem doesn't seem to happen on all players... so if you do get one of the "bad" copies, you may want to check out if it's okay anyway, on your player.

More as I have it.

Just figured out that VBW are actually offering the DVD, status available. Can't image they have added some extras in such a short time.

They changed that a couple of hours ago ;) 'cause at around 13:00 (Lisbon/London Time) I checked their site and they still had "available middle/end October" ;)

They didn't added absolutly nothing to the DVD. Although...with 2 released editions (the malfunctional one and the new one) I highly doubt the "speciall edition" will ever be produced.

Bad news about that topic: It seems they haven't corrected the problem in the second edition completely. I found some reports that scipping errors are still present, mainly in act I. This depends apparently on the error correction of the DVD player. Obviously sophisticated error correction systems can computationally eliminate this scipping error.

Sometimes it has to do with the DVD player itself. I have DVDs that sometimes seem to skip but when I watch it in another player it doesn't happen anymore...

If everything goes well I shall get my copy in the end of next week (granted Monte Christo comes out Monday) and I'll be sure to check my copy too ;)

Of course, if you use a sophisticated error correction system as mentioned above you will not see the errors present on this DVD, but that does not mean that there are NO errors. The errors are still there, but they are computationally eliminated. I found a report of a total of six irregularities on the new edition.

I'm against Blu-Ray, at this point, but are there any plans to release "Rudolf" in this format?

I don't know, but Blu-ray is a good keyword. Maybe they have really released "Rudolf" in this format, nobody knows, and you need a Blu-ray player to playback the disk without errors. But in this case, they should mention it on the cover.

Warning to avoid any confusion: The Rudolf DVD is clearly marked with the DVD VIDEO Logo!

If it was a Blu-ray release, they would have said so, and we would know. This is a DVD release.

I don't know if a Blu-ray release is planned for the show (personally I doubt it).

I doubt about the Blue-Ray edition too. For a simple reason: at least in Europe the Blue-Ray technology didn't got many fans. Blue-Ray DVD sales are very low compared with the normal DVDs.

To avoid any confusion, the second edition Rudolf DVD is clearly marked with the DVD VIDEO Logo!

Just want to post a quote from HitSquad, production team of the DVD, concerning the second edition of the DVD, which can be actually found on the Sound of Music website (maybe somebody missed it there):

During the live recording of the musical RUDOLF - AFFAIRE MAYERLING in Vienna many hours and days have been invested, to achieve the best possible sound and picture quality to capture the live experience. Unfortunately there are some very small interferences at one point in the movie, which, in our opinion, do not disturb the pleasure of viewing the DVD. Thoses interferences are due to a 'camera drop-out' and cannot be resolved. We hope for your understanding. Enjoy this very special live experience.
Yours,
HitSquad-Team

This "unsolvable-camera-problem" isn't of course true, because in the first edition of the DVD those problems in the picture didn't existed.

It doesn't "disturb the pleasure of viewing the DVD" indeed, but makes me think twice next time if it's worth to pay 24€ (36dollars) for a DVD produced by them if I'm not going to get a DVD in conditions...even I at home could burn a DVD without glitches... <_<

Since I have never seen the first edition of the DVD, I cannot judge this edition. Nevertheless, I'm badly disappointed about the technical condition of the second edition, and also about this statement from HitSquad. As Fantasma pointed out, every layperson can meanwhile burn DVDs without glitches.
Accepted there was a camera problem, I would double-check the camera in advance if it is impossible to repeat the shooting. That's German thoroughness.