It's offical, Rush in Rio at Best Buy; both for $35.00

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....&type=category

After watching the whole concert and most of the extras I am very satisfied with Rush in Rio.

Watching the concert on a progressive scan player and Samsung HDTV tv, the video was clear . At times the low lighting made some crowd shots a little blury. It was not the best I have seen but still great quality. Some people might think that the editing was too fast but I felt it worked well with the speed of the songs. For example, on YYZ the camera was all over the place but on Resist it stayed on Geddy and Alex. There were plenty of close ups of the fret work of Geddy and Alex. Also, the overhead shots of Neil were cool. One of my favorite angles was the camera in back of Neil's drum kit that showed the huge crowd from his perspective. I was worried that there would be too many crowd shots like in the Kiss Symphony dvd and DMB's Folsum Field. This was not the case with this dvd. Rather than individual fans being showed every minute there were shots of the crowd as a whole getting into it.

Even without a DTS track the 5.1 sounded great on my basic Onkyo system. Geddy's bass was clear and solid but did not overwhelm the mix. When I seen Rush during this tour Alex's guitar seemed too high to me. Here his guitar sound was mixed perfectly. The drums were also strong without overwhelming the mix. The only adjustment I made was lowering the volume a bit on the rear speakers to turn down the crowd noise.

The documentary and multiangle tracks are on the second disk. Every Rush fan will enjoy these extras. So far I was only able to find one of the two easter eggs. To see the By-Tor movie, which is just the cartoon that played on the big screen, press enter when Alex talks about it during the documentary. I still have not found the Anthem 1975 track.

Cool, thanks for the review.

Well I got tickets to the Columbia, MD viewing! I was not planning to go, but a friend convinced me in to it!

Thanks for the heads up with the Best Buy deal. Although that means I won't be getting on release day since there is now Best Buy where I am, I'm just glad I'm saving at least $10 on both the DVD and CD. Well, at least the Indiana Jones boxed set will keep me busy.

But after watching a video clip, I wanted to ask people who already have the DVD. I noticed Neil Peart used the standard drum grip on his left hand. I know he changed to the traditional grip for the TFE album and concerts. Does he play traditional grip at all? Just asking since I also have his drumming video which he makes an excellent case for the traditional grip which I employed in my own drumming and has helped me tremendously. Perhaps he's just using the standard grip on Tom Sawyer?

Also, I just love the washing machines in the background. It would be really cool if they were REALLY washing their clothes! They have a weird sense of humor, but I like it.

Well, stagehands did come out to do their "laundry" throughout the show.

Yeah they would put quarters in and start them up when they stopped. At the end of the show Geddy and Alex reached in a pulled out the T-shirts and threw them in to the crowd. And apparently in Boston Randy Johnson from the Arizona Diamondbacks was putting quarters in the dryers.

I got a black shirt with "I got this from dryer #3 on the Rush Vapor Trails tour"

Pretty cool.

lucky man. i tried but couldnt be lucky enough to be the 10th caller (98 rock right?)

No, as of yesterday you could still buy tickets on the website. I live in Pennsylvania so I can't listen to 98 rock.

http://www.regalcm.com/index_rush.asp

And they are still on sale for $9.50.

We tried Philly and New Jersey but they were both sold out, so Columbia, MD was the last place we looked.

Damn if I didn't have to be up at 430am I would be at that show dude...

Ah well I got to meet them at the arena last year (just had to rub that one in again)

What price are most people getting the dvd for? I picked mine up today at Wal-Mart for $19.88.

I got the two pack at Best Buy.


Also get to Best Buy early, I went in at 10 AM and they didn't have very many copies maybe 10 CD's and about 15 DVD's and that was it.

I would also suggest opening up your CD or DVD before you leave, because I opened my first CD and it was missing a disk.

I'd write more but I have to finish watching the documentary.

I just picked up the cd and dvd set on my way back into work, gotta say the vocals on the cd seem to be really low, I popped in disc 3, and I could barely hear Geddy singing Limelight, it almost sounds like an audience boot.

Lateralus - "Also get to Best Buy early, I went in at 10 AM and they didn't have very many copies maybe 10 CD's and about 15 DVD's and that was it."


That is almost how it was, at the BB I went to. They had about 20 or so CD's, and only 8 to 10 DVD's. To be exact, I had to get someone from the store to go get the DVD's from the back. They didn't even have it on thier shelves yet!!! WTF!

I'm holding out to watch the DVD later on this evening. I've already jammed the CD. It kicks!!, and the Rio crowd was just incredable IMO.

Is it just me, or does this thing look like it's letterboxed rather than anamorphic? I'm playing it on a 4:3 screen but setting the dvd player to 16:9 and it's still showing as widescreen with black bars rather than filling the screen with a tall and squished picture.

That was going to be my first question... Is this anamorphic or letterboxed? I'm not a HUGE Rush fan, so yes, it DOES matter and will most likely make or break my purchase.

I'm friggin' tired of seeing widescreen releases not enhanced for 16X9 teles... The new King Crimson DVD is the same way, GREAT DVD set, but in this day and age 16X9 should be a no brainer. (I AM a HUGE Crim head, so I'm dealing with it)

guess I'll be dealing with it as well. how is Pat's drumming?replacing Bruford would seem to be a little tough.

I'll order it in a few days, thanks.

Gut - Pat is THE MAN. Seriously. I met him in Nashville on the 2000 tour, very cool dude, AMAZING drummer. It's a GREAT set, other than being non 16X9. I was going to start a thread about it, but hell, you and I are just about the only Crim fans on this board.

thanks again JZ, as always. I no doubt trust you concerning music. I'm now looking even more forward to getting this. ordered it 3 minutes ago!!

chalk another sale up for Johnny.

back to the great white north....still have not cracked the plastic on Rio yet. need to finish Pompeii first.

As other have said, the mix sounds more "live" than the other concerts like Different Stages and Show of Hands. I'd say Different Stages has a good balance. With Rio, I guess they chose more of the "live" sound. It's pretty good though to hear the rampant Rio fans. And they do quiet down eventually. Still have to really scrutinize this DVD.

They were out of the DVD at Best Buy, and at CC the salesman was going to give me a copy, until he professed that someone else asked for it first. Ass. So I ended up having to get it at Media Play. $5 more for both, but oh well.

I'm a bit disappointed in the sound quality of the CDs. Too much crowd noise, and the music is brittle and shrill at times. Nothing is very distinct, so most of time Geddy's singing and Alex's playing is hard to hear well.

The last two songs (the supposed "sound board" recordings: what, were the rest done by giving mics to the Brazilians in the audience? It would explain a lot...), "Between Sun and Moon" and "Vital Signs", sound a lot better than the rest of the discs.

I haven't gotten a chance to watch too much of the DVD yet.

-HM

It appears to be letterboxed...I played it in "full" mode expecting an anamorphic display an instead got black bars and a squished picture. Fixed it using one of the TheatreView modes on my Tosh. On this matter I was rather surprised and annoyed. This aside, it's one great show (haven't seen the extras yet)

Ripped from Rush forum
Anthem easter egg

Disk 2

On the main menu, press 2
Once you get picture for the drum solo, press menu
You're back at the main menu for disk 2...
Press 1
Once you get picture for YYZ, press menu
You're back at the main menu...
Press 1
Once you get picture for YYZ press menu
You're back at the main menu...
Press 2
Once you get picture for the drum solo press menu
You're back at the main menu and is now shows "Special Bonus: Anthem 1975"

Great old clip but I wish they would not make us jump through hoops to get it.

Yup, you unlocked the vault. 2112.

It should just be enter 2112 at the menu and it will take you in.

Or you could just:
put in disc 2.
select YYZ and start to play it.
once the song starts, hit your skip button "exactly" 5 times and wait a few seconds.
your "menu" screen should come back on, this time with a "special bonus" on it offering Anthem 1975 and By-Tor movie

I thought the video quality was below average for this, which I guess is understandable - but it's sort of hazy looking with lots of compression problems.

Yes, Geddy's voice is sort of low in the mix, but since his voice is my least favorite thing about Rush, I don't really mind.

Is it just me, or does Alex now look just like KG from Tenacious D, only with more hair and not quite as fat (but close)?