Search - The Living Planet - A Portrait of the Earth on DVD

Somewhat disappointing, but still great

Einzige | Phoenix Arizona | 12/15/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This series was originally aired on PBS in the mid 1980s and was groundbreaking. It set a new standard for nature documentary. I was excited to see it released on DVD.

Given the apparent age and material of the source for the transfer (it looks to me like the DVD was made from a videotaped copy of the original film stock, and the video tape probably sat in a storage room somewhere for 15+ years), I think one needs to make allowances for a diminished sound and picture quality, but I really wonder who thought it was a good idea to change the order of episodes. The way Sir David originally wrote and performed the voice-overs for the ends of each episode was as a tie-in to the next, so that there would be a sort of cliff-hanger, but also a continuity to the whole series. Some idiot at Time/Life must have thought he/she knew better than Sir Attenborough how the shows should be ordered, so they cut those parts out. The result is very abrupt and startling endings to the shows--sometimes in mid-sentence! Why? This makes no sense at all.

I hope that someone comes to their senses and these classic shows get re-released without the stupid edits, and with the shows in their proper order."

Boo Hiss Time/Warner

Deborah E. Goldeen | Palo Alto, CA USA | 11/17/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Living Planet Series by David Attenborough is a milestone, a benchmark in the production of nature education. What he has done is a quantum leap beyond anything else in the "nature show" category. The depth, breadth and brilliance of this series is unparralled. Unfortunately, TimeWarner got their grubby hands on it. They decided that to reorder and edit the shows so that they fit with the graphics they have chosen for the packaging. I'm not kidding! It is like they put a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Boo Hiss TimeWarner."

Excellent, but get version 2 DVD

Jenny | Salt Lake, UT USA | 02/24/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The program is EXCELLENT, and I've watched it many times on VHS. Unfortunately, the region 1 DVD has been edited and I was very disapointed to find that most of the sections had been shortened. From what I understand, the region 2 DVD is not edited. So if I had it to do over, I would buy the region 2 DVD from amazon.co.uk instead."

Great stuff but embarrasing picture quality

C. FERRARO | Caracas, Venezuela | 08/19/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Great quality series as the majority of BBC's but they did not do any effort to make a new rank cintell trasfer of the material from the negatives. The quality of the picture reminds me an ugly 16mm footage transferred to U-Matic, the noise is umbeareable. Non talking about the poor quality of the sound and the music made with synthetizers from the early seventies.
Same price as prime new series like The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals, Seas of Life, not worth the price."