Search - Dinosaur Discoveries on DVD

Why only half of the Cronkite dinosaur video series?

Der Oberst | 10/19/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This set is peculiar. It contains several videos from National Geographics about dinosaurs. These are somewhat old but otherwise OK. What is really odd is the packaging of only TWO of the four dinosaur documentaries made for A&E back in the early 1990's that were presented and narrated by Walter Cronkite. The original series had four episodes, but this set merely contains two of them (A Tale of a Bone and A Tale of an Egg). What is missing are A Tale of a Tooth and A Tale of a Feather. Why? Are they planning the release of another set with these other two parts on it? Again, some of this stuff is dated, but it still comes off rather well consdering their age.

The set has no menus or any frills what so ever and play much like the DVD-R stuff sold by the History Channel from their website. Again, why?

Because of the two missing episodes as well as the "no-frills" presentation on the DVD, I gave it 3 stars out of five."

Good? Yes. Bad? Also yes.

R. C. Walker | Encinitas CA, United States | 09/01/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"With regard to this 4-dvd set, this reviewer must separate content from packaging. As to the former, the reader is referred to Amazon's editorial review, which is exhaustive and extremely useful. I'd gladly give this excellent set 5 stars on the basis of content.

But there's still that pesky issue of packaging. Let's start with the time-to-disc ratio. There's about 4 hours and 20 minutes of material in the set, total. With today's DVD technology, in which a good 3 hours or more of film and extras can easily be put on a single DVD. So we would naturally expect that we would have 2 DVDs in the set. Right? WRONG! We've got 4.

One note: the first disc, the longest at 95 minutes, contains 3 half-hour episodes. This isn't entirely clear from the unduly brief blurb on the box. On this DVD, as with the others there are NO extras, NO subtitles, nothing that would have required the slightest minimum of extra effort on the part of the producers.

Aside from the fatter storage container required, the use of 4 discs is certainly reflected in the $25 retail price or the $22 ½ Amazon price. The profligate use of plastic is, any way you look at it, a big disadvantage ... to the consumer, that is. You'd better believe the advantage, profit-wise, belongs to the set's producer.

Fear not ... there's more. What sort of box do these DVDs get stuffed into? It's one with a single spindle on which the discs are crammed. It's such fun to get them all off, too. Have you ever seen a box like that? Probably not. But since I also buy bootleg DVDs of items that seem unlikely to see commercial production, I've seen them. The most amateurish of bootleg producers use these things for up to 8 DVDs at a time. Very nice boxes - with separate storage for each of the 4 DVDs - are available. Amazingly, they're thinner than the stingily designed one used here.

Physically, this isn't a very attractive offering. In terms of content, however, it's really compelling. Even though most of the material is a decade old (a huge time gap in the world of paleontology), it's remarkably up-to-date and technically well-produced. Walter Cronkite's assured, professional voice-overs in the last 2 discs is a great plus.

On the whole, this set is worth owning. I give it 5 stars for content, 1 star for packaging and presentation.
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