Planet Earth:Complete Series (RPKG/DVD)

It’s Planet Earth on BluRay, which is exactly what I wanted and exactly what it claimed to be.

Planet Earth received a huge amount of hype when it was released, and for good reason. It has fantastic imagery, great music and David Attenborough.I have a lot to say about how fantastic this series is, but that won't be necessary seeing as how the 1,982 (and counting) reviews have already sufficiently covered that.However, I have not seen the content of this box-set covered in depth, so I'll do so here...PLANET EARTHDISC 1FROM POLE TO POLE: The introduction to the series looks at our planet as a whole and considers the key factors that have shaped its natural history. Without fresh water there is no life on land, while the sun dominates the lives of all animals and plants on Earth and defines their habitats.MOUNTAINS: This tour of our mightiest mountain ranges, starting with the birth of a mountain at one of the lowest places on Earth and ending at the summit of Everest, takes in some of the most reclusive creatures on the planet and reveals the secrets of their survival.FRESH WATER: This episode follows the descent of rivers from their mountain sources to the sea and showcases the unique and dramatic wildlife found within Earth's unexplored waters. Together the waterfalls, canyons, frozen lakes, wetlands, and great rivers form a world of mystery, excitement and awe-inspiring sights.DISC 2CAVES: Deep in an undiscovered world, including both poisonous and flooded caves, we find astonishing crystals; cave anglerfish; the five million bats of Deer Cave in Borneo; and troglodytes - weird creatures, like the Texas cave salamander, that never see daylight nor set foot on the surface.DESERTS: Deserts, which make up a staggering 30% of the land's surface, seem empty and lifeless, yet they are the most varied of our planet's ecosystems. With remarkable footage Planet Earth unravels the secrets behind desert survival and for the first time on such a scale, reveals the ephemeral nature of the desert environment.ICE WORLDS: The advance and retreat of polar ice is the real challenge to life. As the sea freezes in Antarctica all animals flee, except for the Emperor Penguin. Meanwhile, in the Arctic, the polar bear is forced to swim vast distances and take on one of the deadliest adversaries on the planet.DISC 3GREAT PLAINS: On these immense wildernesses, from the baking savannahs of Africa to the frozen tundra of the Arctic, we find the greatest gatherings of wildlife on Earth; but close on the heels of gazelles, caribou or wildebeest comes an array of plains predators... eagles, wolves and lions.JUNGLES: With little seasonality and a longer growing period, jungles are the most productive places on Earth, but surviving in the jungle is far from easy. Using state-of-the-art tracking shots and stunning aerials, Planet Earth moves along the dark forest floor, up through the layers of vegetation and across the canopy.SHALLOW SEAS: Planet Earth follows a humpback whale mother and calf on an epic journey through the shallow seas of our planet. From tropical coral paradises, where the new-born calf takes his first faltering breaths, to the storm-ravaged icy polar seas, the whales' great feeding grounds, we reveal seas of great contrast and surprise.DISC 4SEASONAL FORESTS: From the evergreen forests of the frozen North to the deciduous dry forests of the tropics, these woodlands illustrate the intense seasonality of the Earth. The tallest, largest and oldest organisms on the planet, they are home to a fascinating range of wildlife.OCEAN DEEP: Feast or famine - it's the governing principle of ocean life. From the sailfish, three-meter-long, rapier-billed predators, and the exquisitely shelled Nautilus to the threatened blue whale, this journey into the most unexplored part of the planet reveals the extraordinary survivors of this immense and barren realm.PLANET EARTH - THE FUTUREDISC 5SAVING SPECIES: Many of the animals featured in Planet Earth are endangered so do we face an extinction crisis? Saving Species asks the experts if there really is a problem, looks at the reasons behind the declining numbers of particular animals and questions how we choose which species we want to conserve.INTO THE WILDERNESS: Pollution, climate change and a growing human population are all putting pressure on earth's wildernesses including the Bialowieza forest, the Gobi desert & the Arctic tundra. So how much of the planet is still wilderness? And why should we care? Into the Wilderness explores why these uninhabited expanses are important for our survival as well as that of all creatures on the planet.LIVING TOGETHER: The history of conservation throws up some interesting ideas as we look to the future of an ever more populated planet. How can conservation fit into this new world driven by economics and development? Living Together looks at the challenges facing conservation in the 21st Century and looks at the role of religion in promoting a moral and ethical approach to the world we live in.BONUS FEATURES (only available on the standard edition)OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF OF BEHIND-THE-SCENES FOOTAGE - One 10-minute featurette for each episode.PLANET EARTH - THE FUTURE - This 150 minute companion series looks at what the future may hold for endangered animals, habitats and - ultimately - ourselves.Well, I hope that was helpful to anyone who hasn't yet picked up this title (although I doubt there are many left) and wants to know more about it. As you can see, this is quite an extensive DVD set, but well worth it. Like everyone else is saying, highly recommended!

Love this series. DVDs are as should be. No damage. They play great

Excelente calidad de imagen. Mi hija lo disfruta en cada reproducción

Love this series

I have always been very interested in Nature and wildlife, so naturally I was interested when I kept seeing previews for Planet Earth by the BBC in movie theaters. I watched the Discovery Channel as a kid every night for years, and even now at 21 I watch nature shows on PBS whenever I can, but Planet Earth trumps every nature show I have ever watched. To me, Planet Earth is the culmination of everything that I have ever thought or felt about Nature.Planet Earth is just so great that I don't know where to begin describing it. Perhaps its most fulfilling quality is that some of the animal behavior that was filmed on Planet Earth had not ever been filmed before, and probably will never be filmed again, due to the nearly unbearable weather and demography of the locations involved. From the extremely rare snow leopard chasing a goat down the side of the Himalayas to a pride of lions bringing down and eating a huge elephant, Planet Earth truly does live up to its claim of showing "planet Earth as you've never seen it before. Several new species were filmed for the first time in the wild as well, like New Guniea's amazing birds of paradise.As if all of the adventurous and breathtaking filming wasn't enough by itself, the whole series is filmed in HDTV, and is the first wildlife documentary to do so. Many of the views are so clear and fresh that at times you feel as if you are actually there. Also, the Planet Earth film crew used some pioneering filming methods, like filming the majority of the series in a helicopter instead of on the ground, flying in a hot air balloon over forests in Madagascar, and using satellite imaging to show certain areas and demographic features not visible or not nearly as detailed when seen with the naked eye. The film crew of Planet Earth really put their lives on hold to make this documentary the best wildlife documentary ever, and it shows. Another feature of this series that I love is that there is a 10 minute video at the end of each episode which gives you an inside look at the daunting, dangerous, and nearly insurmountable tasks the production and film crews had to face in each unique environment.The scale of Planet Earth could also be said to be its defining quality, as it is the largest wildlife documentary in several ways. BBC literally spanned the globe in the filming of Planet Earth, visiting 62 different countries and 204 different locations. It took over five years for the series to be completed, and the BBCs production budget of $25 million U.S. dollars was the biggest ever for any wildlife documentary.In the end, you should buy Planet Earth for the same reason that the series was created - to become aware of the inherent beauty and value of Nature, and to see firsthand humanity's mostly negative impact on our Planet's wildlife. Planet Earth's main premise is that the more we see and learn about our amazing planet and its wildlife, the more we will want to protect and conserve it from global warming and other man-made problems that threaten or destroy wildlife and its habitats. Planet Earth shows us a planet that is fragile yet strong, beautiful yet harsh, explored yet unknown. Above all, Planet Earth shows us a planet worth cherishing and conserving.

A masterpiece in displaying and exploring the natural world. The overall image quality has aged quite well, colours are not quite as bright and strong as todays Blu rays coming out now but that's to be expected. The footage of the snow leopard in the mountains episode is extraordinary.At the time of its release the BBC had access to helicopters with stablized cameras for the first time allowing them to capture that super smooth motion. After the life of mammals and Life in the Undergrowth this series continued the trend of filming digitally. It's also their first natural history series shot almost entirely in HD. The helicopter shots are not just used for those ever impressive establishing shots but can also film animals above from a safe distance without disturbing them. In one sequence they are able to film a wolf hunt simply by flying above and using continual unbroken footage as it unfolds.Most of the shots though are still tripod shots and very impressive they are. The ones underwater obviously have their own style of filming.The series gives us lots of facts about the different habitats. There's a strong effort to connect the weather and geology of each location to the animals and plants that live there, especially in the jungles, deserts and ice poles. Following improvements in microphotography there's lots of focus on insects too which just wasn't possible in the 1970s and 1980s. The jungle episode was obviously filmed in quite low light conditions but still overall looks very nice, the cave episode too is also quite grainy and struggles in low light. Several episodes also take place under the water which requires a different style and method of filming. There's a few dolly shots but again its mostly tripod shots, I'm not such a fan of the later BBC series where the camera is constantly in motion, you can't beat a good old tripod shot sometimes. The music is a very effective addition to the series and is used to strong effect when needed.The sound on the blu ray is clear and crisp, I don't know how much was added in post production, quite a bit i suspect.Over all there's quite a good balance between all the eye candy and the facts and narration. Again to stress the Blu Ray colours are still beautiful, the image is clear and sharp. Some of my favourite images came from the seasonal forests episode and the desert episode. My only complaint is that things can feel somewhat rushed, we only get 3-5 minutes per sequence. Maybe they just didn't have the footage to show more, the BBC has reused footage from these episodes too.While we've become used to breathtaking wildlife photography now and exotic locations, this series also with the original blue planet was such a hit when it came out on TV that it's hard to over hype. One of the great things about watching this now too is that our TVs have also reached the point where this series can be viewed in the best quality, many Televisions back in 2006 were nothing like what we have now.

Having missed all the Attenburgh tv series, being hit by SAD as usual post-Christmas, but having been bought Blue Planet II for my last birthday and thoroughly enjoyed it, I decided I would order them all and watch each set of discs in series order, starting with this one (from 2006). I allowed myself one episode/evening and i did enjoy each one but in comparison with BPII, the 12-13-year difference showed. It’s clear that wildlife photography and production has moved on, and I found these episodes slower, more drawn out and slightly disappointing. I’m sure if I’d watched them at the time I’d have been very impressed, and I’m certainly glad I’ve seen them now. Overall, and not faulting the earlier series, I’m highly impressed however with how much more the teams cover and provide now, and how much slicker? - professional - they’ve become.

‘Planet Earth’ is a ‘wonderful’ series in the true sense of that word, and yet a series that is equally deeply depressing as man’s impact threatens the world’s ecosystems. At the heart of the problem, ‘of course’, lies the explosion of human population that has increased from 1.5 billion a century ago, to six billion today (or at least in 2006).Broadcast in 2006, ‘Planet Earth’ mostly comprises (see the end of this review for the extras) eleven hour-long episodes that showcases wildlife in its landscape context. But only the world’s remaining wildernesses are thus addressed: there is little or no attention given to urban or agrarian wildlife. After the first episode, which takes us on a journey through the world’s different climes from one pole to the other, each is devoted to a particular form of habitat. Thus we have a programme on deserts, on forests, on seas, etc. The most unexpected for most will probably be the one devoted to caves.Each episode has at least one ‘wow’ moment; and each episode is full of stupendous photography (although the extent of ‘fakery’ is not known). The last ten minutes of each show is devoted to how one element of that episode was shot. It is clear that those on the ground needed to have immense patience to get their prize on camera.I also noticed a geographical bias in the coverage. I did a rough continental count of where the examples were shot: Asia had twenty-one, North America had eighteen, Africa fifteen, South America ten, Oceania six, and the Poles only four (but they do also have a whole episode to themselves). The odd one out is Europe with only four, three of which occur in the seasonal forest episode and one in that of mountains. But Europe is curiously absent in any of the shows on caves, and both of the episodes on water (fresh and salt). One Asian country – Japan – comparable in size to Britain receives more coverage than Europe.Another bugbear is the use of imperial measurements one minute, followed by metric the next. I love the soundtrack (by George Fenton) as music qua music, but it cloys when shown with the visuals, as if it is telling us how we should feel, such as painting African dogs in a bad light as they try to bring down an antelope: don’t they also have offspring that need to be fed?My set also came with the three hour-long ‘Planet earth: The Future’ episodes. Here the issues about saving species, the threats of population growth and global warming, and sustainable development are discussed by the likes of Rowan Williams, James Lovelock, Jonathan Porritt, Edward Wilson, Richard Mabey, and Tony Juniper – and these are only the names I know. These are all complex issues with few (if any) simple solutions. Jonathan Porritt makes the valid point that viewers watching ‘Planet Earth’ and similar programmes may remain passive about the threats because they assume that everything out there is OK. Don’t! This may well be your last chance to see these wonderful wildernesses.

This review is for the Blu-Ray Special Edition version. Amazon have a habit of putting reviews of one format/version in with others. I don't comment on audio quality as I only have standard TV speakers (although I am happy with the sound).I bought this after I watched the Life series and that blew my socks off, not just in terms of the outstanding HD quality, but also in the quality and interest in the show itself. I expected the same form Planet Earth and I was not disappointed. It is a huge box set containing:11 episodes and their associated diaries (SD)3 HD episodes from the Natural WorldSecrets of the Maya Underworld (SD)Great Planet Earth moments (SD)Additional audio optionsThe show isn't just about the animal and plant life, but also the make up of the earth too. A real all-round package to educate and entertain. There were a few parts where my attention wandered a little, but this is a box set that covers a lot of natural world and so it stands to reason that not every aspect will be to everyone's taste. That being said, I can't find a reason to mark it down for that.When I have moments where I want to berate the BBC and their squandered licence fees, I pick up a BBC Earth documentary and find a little bit of forgiveness.At the current price of 15GBP, this is a Blu-Ray bargain. Also recommended is the accompanying book (  Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It Before  and  Planet Earth: The Photographs  ). Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It BeforePlanet Earth: The Photographs

Even after 8 years, there is simply nothing on blu ray to match this pinnacle of the Nature Documentary genre. Consider it as a high-tec remake of "The Living Planet" (which in its breadth and depth and love of its subject is the gold standard) - only without the appalling experimental electronic "noises off"! I mean no disrespect to the very charming and talented Elizabeth Parker, but "The Living Planet", with hindsight, emerges from the stewpot of history as a victim of the Stockhausen school of possible hearing difficulties - so often apparent in the sonic jihads of the 20th century. "Planet Earth", on the other hand, is perfect. It leads me inevitably to the daydream of how wonderful it would be if "The Living Planet" and "Life On Earth" were to be remade with musical scoring by George Fenton...Buy this, and buy a spare, and buy a copy for all your friends and relations! As our beloved Sir David hints from time to time in the narration - this could be the last we see of Life on Earth as we have known it. Bear in mind that species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate.Soon we will be left with only these precious videos and gene banks for the fortunate...