Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45292 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-06-14
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, French, German, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 310 minutes

DVD Description
The 49th Annual Eurovision Song Contest held in Istanbul took place over two days with a qualifying round and a final held in May. This DVD covers all of the footage from the shows as well as an interview with the winning entry, Ukraine's Ruslana with Wild Dances.

As usual, 2004 saw a broad selection of entries covering a number of genres, although we did appear to be missing the "joke" entrant this year…on second thoughts…..both Estonia and Israel had questionable tracks! After a 24 year break we welcomed back Monaco, with their French euro-pop number Notre Planète, performed by Maryon. The UK entrant was former Fame Academy participant James Fox asking to Hold On To Our Love. Other more notable ballads competing for points included the Elton-John sounding Du Bist by Austrian’s Tie Break, Iceland’s Jonsi with Heaven and the Irish entrant, Chris Doran whose song If My World Stopped Turning was co-written by ex-Westlife member Bryan McFadden.

Euro-dance came courtesy of Belgium’s Xandee with 1 Life, Sweden’s Lena Philipsson with It Hurts and the Maltese who managed to combine a house beat with some rather operatic singing in Julie & Ludwig’s song On Again...Off Again but it was Bosnia Herzegovina who really pumped up the BPM with Euro-beats from Deen on In The Disco. Others to look out for included the French love song from Jonatan Cerrada - A Chaque Pas, Germany’s smooth pop from Max: Can’t Wait Until Tonight and The Netherlands’ Re-Union whose acoustic ballad Without You reminded one of 90’s hit More Than Words by Extreme. The Greek entry was Nana Mouskouri’s protégé Sakis; the first man to grace the cover of Greek Vogue, the face of Greek Pepsi and Vodafone as well as a spokesperson for Greek-Turkish relations – his song Shake It was produced by Ricky Martin producer Desmond Child.

Special Features
Disc 1:

• The semi final (includes subtitles – running time = 120 mins)
  
• The artists
  
• "Behind the Scenes" stories

Disc 2:

• The grand final (includes subtitles – running time = 190 mins)
  
• Interview with the winner, Ukraine's Ruslana

Synopsis
Featuring performances from the competition. The 49th event sees a qualifying round and the final.

Customer Reviews

A good start . . .
It's shocking really that it's taken the EBU to start marketing a DVD of each year's contest. So 3 cheers for their efforts.

And for the most part this is a good product. Each full broadcast is on the 2 discs (semi-final and final), though chapter breaks in the voting section of the final would've been a good idea (it's all on one chapter). And the Artist info "bonus" section is a waste: a photo and text bio: perhaps add the preview videos next year?

But the quality is good--at least, in technical terms. Some of the performances are, well, frightening. And some grand. It's Eurovision after all

Pure, unadulterated fun
This is a review coming from a Eurovision junkie, I watch this about every week, i just love it. Disc 1 is the best because it has all the embarrassingly bad countries performing in the semifinal, Belarus and Estonia to name a few.

I would have liked a few more special features, and the feature where you get to check out the artists is very poor indeed.

But this does not overshadow the complete fun that is the Eurovision Song Contest, if you are completely in love with Eurovision I suggest you get this right away, its sort of like having a CD, you skip back and forth to songs you like.

Eurovision for life!

Fantastic!
This is probably the best Eurovision yet and this 2 DVD set provides hours of fun. For me it was actually nearly as exciting and watching it live... The DVDs are well presented and offer the chance to skip to the song you want to see. The songs sound great, with the notable ones being from Greece, Ukraine, etc. Also full credit to Turkey for not just putting on a great show but for sticking a ska/punk band in to the mix of the usual pop.