Search - Planet Ocean - Deluxe Box Set on DVD

Teresa C. from ROCKFORD, MI
Reviewed on 7/19/2010...

beautiful graphics, i must see for all families

Beautiful underwater footage

Eric Peterson | 11/03/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a truly amazing collection of underwater films. Anyone who likes fish, sharks, the beauty that lives in the ocean or is interested in oceanic conservation will love this set. I've been watching it with my son who is really interested in this kind of stuff since going to the aquarium. We have both learned a lot."

Extreme disappointment

Brenda Pink | Lethbridge, AB, CAN | 05/11/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, this is a Canadian production that was originally released as "The Living Sea - Collectors Edition". It has no link whatsoever with the highly acclaimed Planet Earth collection. As another reviewer mentions, the release date on this set is 2008. The copyright date however is 1995, and I suspect the filming date is even earlier. It appears to be a series of 20-30 minute films that look suspiciously like an old TV series. I think the rerelease of this under the Planet Ocean title was a direct attempt to cash in on the success of the BBC Planet Earth series.

What that means is that film and sound quality are horrendous. Watching it, I almost expected the flap-flap sound of a film roll running through an old projector. The colours were washed out. Underwater lighting was inadequate, but may have been the best there was at the time of filming. There were almost more shots of the divers than of any undersea critters. Sound tracks were hokey at best, at times sounding like old westerns and at other times, sounding like Grade F sci-fi movies. Shots of fish were not very numerous and when they did find a good specimen, there are multiple shots that appear just to be cropped, while the narrator - marine biologist John Stoneman - drones on philosophically about the planets oceans. In the segment on shipwrecks, where some commentary would have been helpful, there was none, leaving you to wonder what was going on. A lot of the segments were repetitive, covering subjects covered in other segments. Each of the 4 disks has 2 25 minute segments on it, so that the fact that there are 4 disks is rather misleading, since we are only talking a 4 hour total here.

Generally, if you want to see underwater life, I'd give this set a miss. Instead, I'd highly recommend Ocean Realm. Film quality is vastly superior in Ocean Realm."

Very Disappointing purchase

Susie C | Fresno, CA,USA | 04/08/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Although the release date is listed as 2008 this series was obviously photographed a number of years ago. Photographic quality as well as sound quality is very inferior in comparison to contemporary standards. Limited narration is provided and the disks do not measure up to what would be expected from the text descriptions."