PLANET EARTH Review

Overall 5.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

WhitechapelMaiden
Concord, GA

Absolutley AMAZING

into Independent Films, Likes to be entertained

Pros

Amazing Shots, Beautiful Colors, Educational

Cons

Sooner or later you have to quit watchin

JAN

2009

For a single sentence to review this series, I have this:

Planet Earth is one of the most visually astounding nature documentaries ever recorded.

The narration is top notch, provided by the documentary narrating staple, David Attenborough whose voice has graced countless nature documentaries in the past. The dialog is well written and clearly describes the scenes.

One thing people may not pay much attention to, though it plays a big role in the viewing experience, is the music. The music was written by George Fenton and performed by the BBC Orchestra. The pieces fit perfectly with the scene and never over power the imagery on screen nor the narration. The blend is perfect.

On the visual side, in SD (standard definition) the video was quite impressive; in HD the video is jaw dropping gorgeous! On the back of the packaging you are warned that there are scenes that were not filmed in HD. In these scenes there is some grain present, however one must remember that a properly upscaled image done in a studio is still better than the image given by an upscaling DVD player. The amount of SD footage is quite limited so for the most part everything is in true HD. Generally the SD images seem "grainer" and have less detail than their HD counterparts. It isn't so jarring as to make you want to stop the discs, but you can tell where things were shot in SD.

I would say that in HD we are seeing wildlife in better detail than we would visiting a zoo, as the images are extremely close up. The only people who could approach an animal that closely at a zoo would be the workers.

The only complaint I have on the series is the lack of the bonus features from the SD DVD release. There was quite a bit of extra material packed onto those discs and for some reason they have decided we need to pay more for the HD version and not get these bonuses. I would have been happy if they would have included them even as a bonus SD DVD disc but instead they opted to include those extras only in the cheaper SD DVD set. Disappointing, but I think the enhanced visuals of the HD set make up for some of the price difference.

I highly recommend this series to anyone interested in nature.