One question guys, I've only made it through 2 episodes of PE and just started watching Fresh Water when I couldn't help but wonder if I have a defective disc. After the opening water montage, you know, when the Alligator snaps at the seals. Just after this scene the camera pans across clouds and mountains. Does anyone else notice about a minute of what looks to me like digital noise that flashes back and forth between brighter and darker?

I would think that you couldn't miss it if you saw it. It reminds me of trying to watch TV via antenna. It's almost static-like. The weird thing is that it's entirely dependent on the scene itself. Once the scene switches I might be looking at 5/5 PQ and then it goes to another scene and I'm in static-ville again. I would say it's digital noise prevalent in dark scenes but I'm starting to see it even in mountain top cloudy scenes too.

I also noticed the same flashing static scene during the monkey scene on the Mountains episode towards the end. Has anyone else noticed this or is my disc defective?

This just happened to be a floater disc from WHV Online.

Planet Earth's PQ sucks as an HD title. BBC-HD is defective, not the disc.

(Go ahead, ask me what I really think.)

Some shots are noisy due to conditions but you should be able to tell those pretty easily.

Some of the time lapse shots will exhibit a "brighter and darker" flashing due to the subtle differences in the way the Sun was lighting the scene at each frame they took.

Also, if you have a Samsung with DNIe turned on it can cause a weird flashing effect on lots of smaller type images.

A lot of (most?) of the series was shot on hi-def digital video. Much of the noise appears to be related to high ISO amplifying the noise of the imager in dark scenes and shadows. Particularly in shots where it seems they have done some heavy cropping.

On a whole, I found the vast majority of the series to be razor sharp and gorgeous.

I'm still on the third disc and so far the only "noisy" scene I've seen is the caves episode.

I do have a Samsung but DNIe is turned off and the problem that I see is scene related but it's more than just noisy. For example, is the underwater scenes I see digital noise everywhere but it's not too distracting. This is literally static that flashes bright and dark, bright and dark, over and over. Then is switches to another scene and it's crystal clear. This makes me think it's not a defective disc because it should cross over into scenes if it was a physical problem with the disc. Although I'm more likely to experience different problems altogether such as skipping or freezing up actually.

Has anyone tried the specific spot that I mentioned to see what I mean? It's so pronounced that you can't miss it.

Equipment specific if you ask me. No picture defects on my setup.

I took a bunch of pictures tonight. I'll post them tomorrow. It's really amazing how little good HD is in the set when you look at it with a critical eye.

Equipment specific if you ask me. No picture defects on my setup.


Maybe, but it seems to be scene related so I'm ruling out a disc problem for now. I haven't experienced any static/snow on any other discs so I don't think it's a player problem.

I took a bunch of pictures tonight. I'll post them tomorrow. It's really amazing how little good HD is in the set when you look at it with a critical eye.

I'm glad I didn't waste my money on more of Warner's mediocre PQ.

Each to his own, but I don't agree that this set is a waste of money. I have watched most of the titles with an XA2 and JVC RS1 projector combination. Much of the imagery is outstanding - there are some very challenging shooting conditions and naturally the image quality suffers as a result. However, the vast majority is noise free and razor sharp.

I just took a picture of the flashing static that I see across the screen in certain scenes. This is right after the waterfall in Fresh Water. I took a picture of one of the mountains in the clouds. In that dark areas there is a very fast, flashing horizontal static. The picture doesn't really do it justice but hopefully you can see it. Look for a pattern of light dots in the dark areas that seems to go across horizontally.

It's very noticeable while viewing enough for my wife to actually say something and that's saying ALOT. She barely notices the difference between SD and HD sometimes.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/5194/pelx1.th.jpg (http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pelx1.jpg)

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/5194/pelx1.jpg

So far I have only watched disc 3 and it looked amazing!

Yes, I saw it too. And a few others. I have no idea what causes it though. It was talked about here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=841456

And someone in that thread mentioned a blu-ray thread:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=8245

Yes, I saw it too. And a few others. I have no idea what causes it though. It was talked about here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=841456

And someone in that thread mentioned a blu-ray thread:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=8245


Thanks Puddy, I now feel vindicated that this is not just a one-off problem and many others including Blu Rayers are experiencing it too. I tried to do a search on this but I couldn't figure out how to define the problem. Anyhow, I'm sending an e-mail off to BBC America and see what they can do.

I read that BBC blames the problem on RF interference from the radios in the helicopter which seems plausible but I have seen this issue in scenes that I don't believe a helicopter was used and I would think that given reports that this problem runs throughout the series, they would have caught the issue before they wrapped up the entire shoot.

Here is my quick gallery. I only went through the first disc, I have to assume the rest of the set is equally... "challenged".

Planet Earth: Visual Issues Gallery (http://www.theaterfood.net/galleries/planetearth/)

wow

Here is my quick gallery. I only went through the first disc, I have to assume the rest of the set is equally... "challenged".

Planet Earth: Visual Issues Gallery (http://www.theaterfood.net/galleries/planetearth/)


Wildfire, I'm surprised that you didn't mention the flashing snowy-static scenes. Out of all the problems that you mentioned, the strobing static is by far the most distracting to me.

What's the episode/time for that, episode 3? I've only seen 2 episodes of the series thus far, but I don't recall seeing strobing/flashing. I guess that means I get treated to it tonight.

What's the episode/time for that, episode 3? I've only seen 2 episodes of the series thus far, but I don't recall seeing strobing/flashing. I guess that means I get treated to it tonight.

I'm not at home but here's what I remember. It's on episode 3, Fresh Water. Right after the opening montage, the last image you see is a waterfall. Right after the waterfall, you see a cloudy sky and mountains. The dark areas of the mountain are filled with a strobing, snowy pattern of noise that wouldn't be so noticeable if it were strobing at a regular interval in a horizontal line pattern. I'm not sure this really answers the problem as I see this same issue in parts of the Mountains episode as well.

I've e-mailed BBC America and here's the response,

" Due to the nature of filming in some extreme and remote habitats, where sensitive HD cameras cannot be used, a small percentage of the material in Planet Earth was captured on 16mm film. For this reason some shots may exhibit visual artefacts, noise or apparent film grain. This is particularly evident in low light conditions and night vision shots. Every effort has been made to ensure that the picture quality is as clear and stable as possible in the circumstances.

>Many of the shots on the Freshwater episode were shot using the

>"heligimble" camera. During filming for this episode the radio in the

>helicopter interefered with the onboard recorder. This was not realised

>until the film crew returned to base and had no opportunity to retake.

>The shots had to be specially cleaned up, but however some RF

>interference was still evident in the source material.

Also............

This is the notorious Caves episode which was mostly captured on 16mm

> >film and shot in almost complete darkness.

> >We saw this effect in the encode sign off for Blu-ray (it exists in

> >HD-DVD too but not as obvious), however due to the low quality of the

> >source material and the uprez to High Def this was the best we could

> >achieve with the master material provided.

> >If you remember this is why we put a rider on the packaging stating

> >"due to the nature of filming in some habitats some footage is not in

> >full HD".

> >I have since been running a series of tests with Sony with every type

> >of cross converter and encoder, to see if we can get a better result,

> >but results are inconclusive at present.

> >I will get a more detailed formal wording that you can put out to your

> >customer services people.

Woah, 16mm?!? Not even 35mm? We're talking documentary footage in Rattle and Hum level fim res. here!
:eek:


(I keed, but it's true...)

Woah, 16mm?!? Not even 35mm? We're talking documentary footage in Rattle and Hum level fim res. here!
:eek:


(I keed, but it's true...)

16mm is commonly used for natural history filming - as the cameras and stock are lighter weight and more practical for use filming in less-than-ideal environments.

My immediate question then is: what would be better... a pro-sumer HD-cam, or the 16mm film? From the look of the content, I can't say I wouldn't rather have the pro-sumer HD stuff. I was joking about the 8mm content on my photo page, but I guess I wasn't that far off.

> >We saw this effect in the encode sign off for Blu-ray (it exists in
> >HD-DVD too but not as obvious), however due to the low quality of the
> >source material and the uprez to High Def this was the best we could
> >achieve with the master material provided.
How could it be less obvious on HD-DVD? Aren't they the same exact VC-1 encode? I'm going to Netflix the HD-DVD version to compare and contrast on a different player.

Some shots are noisy due to conditions but you should be able to tell those pretty easily.

Some of the time lapse shots will exhibit a "brighter and darker" flashing due to the subtle differences in the way the Sun was lighting the scene at each frame they took.

Also, if you have a Samsung with DNIe turned on it can cause a weird flashing effect on lots of smaller type images.


Well Spectricide, you were right after all. I decided to check to see if DNIe was turned on and it was! In fact, all my tweaked setting for my Samsung HLS6187 had reverted back to default and I hadn't even noticed it. I had Contrast up to 100! Anyhow, I quickly reverted back to my tweaked settings, Movie mode, DNR off, DNIe off, Sharpness 0, etc. and the flashing was reduced to near-un-noticeable levels. Now, the flickering is definitely still there, it's just that my settings brought it out to maddeningly annoying levels.

The only downside to reverting back to my settings is that I got used to the Dynamic and max'd contrast so now I have that, "Wow, my tweaked settings are much dimmer and warmer than I'm used to. Also, I had artificially sharpened the heck out of the image thanks to both Sharpness and DNIe so my image seems softer now. I have to review some scenes some more but I'm thankful that you mentioned this.

My immediate question then is: what would be better... a pro-sumer HD-cam, or the 16mm film? From the look of the content, I can't say I wouldn't rather have the pro-sumer HD stuff. I was joking about the 8mm content on my photo page, but I guess I wasn't that far off.


How could it be less obvious on HD-DVD? Aren't they the same exact VC-1 encode? I'm going to Netflix the HD-DVD version to compare and contrast on a different player.

16mm film has a higher resolution than HD Cam. Most television shows that are shot on film are shot on 16mm. The film grain evident in all the low light situations is just inherent of high speed film. There looks to be some standard DV on some of the content of Planet Earth. I counted 5 shots that totally look like standard DV.

Also I found this statement to be interesting, "We saw this effect in the encode sign off for Blu-ray (it exists in HD-DVD too but not as obvious)" I wonder why the same VC1 for BR and HD-DVD would have differing results?

Then he says, "I have since been running a series of tests with Sony with every type of cross converter and encoder, to see if we can get a better result, but results are inconclusive at present." It looks like they are still trying to get a better transfer. You have to wonder if they succeed are they planning to re-issue?

So you trashed the quality of the disk and could not recognize that your settings were way off. The sure adds to your credibility. :rolleyes:

Uhhh, yeah I guess I just lost my street cred here. Of course you remember that the problem does actually exist for more than just me. If you check out the links above you'll see two other threads on the subject and BBC America admiting there was RF interference with the HD cam.

What I didn't know was that the default setting on the Samsung made this flaw pop out even more.

I should not have put the sarcastic smilie up there...if it bothers you, it does. I grew up in the era of black and white television and what we are seeing now is amazing. The one scene that really jumps out at me was at about 6:05 of "the desert", where they are doing a flyover. I saw all kinds of noticible noise in the sand, so I realize it's not perfect but, what is. Overall I think it's a teriffic presentation. Would I be willing to pay more for perfection...no.

I've watched three episodes and I think it looks wonderful. The only bit I think they should have done better is the sun shot with all the banding which they must have missed or forgotten to fix. But that's insignificant to me.

I watched Episode 3. It's finally at the level I thought Planet Earth was supposed to be when I bought it. A few harsh areas but overall, it's mostly HD and looks good. No strobing that I could see, aside from natural lighting variances from water/clouds/mist.

Unfortunately Ep3 was really boring. It seems like they're just jumping from shot opportunity to shot opportunity and trying to fix them all together after the fact, which is probably the actual case.

Does anyone know what the frame rate is on the PE set? Is it 24 or 25?

Well Spectricide, you were right after all. I decided to check to see if DNIe was turned on and it was! In fact, all my tweaked setting for my Samsung HLS6187 had reverted back to default and I hadn't even noticed it. I had Contrast up to 100! Anyhow, I quickly reverted back to my tweaked settings, Movie mode, DNR off, DNIe off, Sharpness 0, etc. and the flashing was reduced to near-un-noticeable levels. Now, the flickering is definitely still there, it's just that my settings brought it out to maddeningly annoying levels.

The only downside to reverting back to my settings is that I got used to the Dynamic and max'd contrast so now I have that, "Wow, my tweaked settings are much dimmer and warmer than I'm used to. Also, I had artificially sharpened the heck out of the image thanks to both Sharpness and DNIe so my image seems softer now. I have to review some scenes some more but I'm thankful that you mentioned this.

Hiya folks, just thought I would chime in here. I just got my A2 hooked up to a Sanyo Z5 PJ and ISF calibrated. What a friggin awesome picture!!

Anyway, my point is this, I am reading thru software reviews etc and am thinking, I'm not buying this it sounds like crap. Low and behold, buddy has his set all screwed up and is blaming the discs?

Please make sure you are calibrated at least to some extent before slamming discs...come on guys and gals, pay attention here :rolleyes:

I'm blaming the discs, my set is calibrated, and the PQ problems have nothing to do with device settings--it's poor source and somewhat poor encoding (or codec). I put up pictures, what more do you want, a certified letter from the BBC? If you want to think that Planet Earth has unparalleled image quality, be my guest, but there are substantial problems that go far beyond one person with a small RPTV with a tweaked setting.

Does this matter? For Planet Earth no... they won't and can't remaster this. But if we keep accepting junk source inserted into a fancy HD container as truly 'next-gen', then it will never get better. If you have a 42" TV or smaller you probably won't care about any of this anyway--watch your DVD upscaled content and laugh at us 'enthusiasts'. :D

Some shots are noisy due to conditions but you should be able to tell those pretty easily.

Some of the time lapse shots will exhibit a "brighter and darker" flashing due to the subtle differences in the way the Sun was lighting the scene at each frame they took.

Also, if you have a Samsung with DNIe turned on it can cause a weird flashing effect on lots of smaller type images.

None of these is what he is referring to. He is talking about what I and others have cited since this thing hit the shelves, that it is RIDDLED with horrible digital noise and artifacting. Some people either can't see this because of limitations in their systems, refuse to acknowledge it, or say it's not a big deal. It IS a big deal, particularly for what they are charging for this set.

That being said, it also achieves stunning PQ at times.

I'm not at home but here's what I remember. It's on episode 3, Fresh Water. Right after the opening montage, the last image you see is a waterfall. Right after the waterfall, you see a cloudy sky and mountains. The dark areas of the mountain are filled with a strobing, snowy pattern of noise that wouldn't be so noticeable if it were strobing at a regular interval in a horizontal line pattern. I'm not sure this really answers the problem as I see this same issue in parts of the Mountains episode as well.

I've e-mailed BBC America and here's the response,

" Due to the nature of filming in some extreme and remote habitats, where sensitive HD cameras cannot be used, a small percentage of the material in Planet Earth was captured on 16mm film. For this reason some shots may exhibit visual artefacts, noise or apparent film grain. This is particularly evident in low light conditions and night vision shots. Every effort has been made to ensure that the picture quality is as clear and stable as possible in the circumstances.

>Many of the shots on the Freshwater episode were shot using the

>"heligimble" camera. During filming for this episode the radio in the

>helicopter interefered with the onboard recorder. This was not realised

>until the film crew returned to base and had no opportunity to retake.

>The shots had to be specially cleaned up, but however some RF

>interference was still evident in the source material.
A HA!
Yes I suspected as much. I think I said in my original review that it looked like someone was running a vacuum cleaner and it was interfering with the camera.

My personal opinion is, if it looks like crap and you can't retakie it or clean it up for some reason (BS), then DON'T INCLUDE IT!

This is the notorious Caves episode which was mostly captured on 16mm

> >film and shot in almost complete darkness.

> >We saw this effect in the encode sign off for Blu-ray (it exists in

> >HD-DVD too but not as obvious), however due to the low quality of the

> >source material and the uprez to High Def this was the best we could

> >achieve with the master material provided.

> >If you remember this is why we put a rider on the packaging stating

> >"due to the nature of filming in some habitats some footage is not in

> >full HD".

> >I have since been running a series of tests with Sony with every type

> >of cross converter and encoder, to see if we can get a better result,

> >but results are inconclusive at present.

> >I will get a more detailed formal wording that you can put out to your

> >customer services people.
16mm IS full HD! The disclaimer is clearly referring to things shot in SD, like the underwater shots.

I'm blaming the discs, my set is calibrated, and the PQ problems have nothing to do with device settings--it's poor source and somewhat poor encoding (or codec). I put up pictures, what more do you want, a certified letter from the BBC? If you want to think that Planet Earth has unparalleled image quality, be my guest, but there are substantial problems that go far beyond one person with a small RPTV with a tweaked setting.

Does this matter? For Planet Earth no... they won't and can't remaster this. But if we keep accepting junk source inserted into a fancy HD container as truly 'next-gen', then it will never get better. If you have a 42" TV or smaller you probably won't care about any of this anyway--watch your DVD upscaled content and laugh at us 'enthusiasts'. :D

Absolutely. If we accept junk without complaint, they will keep giving us junk, regardless of where in the process the junk comes in.

Low and behold, buddy has his set all screwed up and is blaming the discs?

Please make sure you are calibrated at least to some extent before slamming discs...come on guys and gals, pay attention here :rolleyes:

Waitaminute guys, my settings were on default by accident. That's not exactly what I would call screwed up settings. Keep in mind the problem of RF interference does exist in the picture but is just more easily seen with certain settings than others. How many other discs behaved this way for me? NONE. That's why I didn't think I had problematic settings but rather a problematic disc.

I had only one problem, Wildfire99 cataloged many other issues that I didn't mention but have nothing to do with "screwed up settings".

Anyhow, I told them that this flashing was present in more than just the Fresh Water Episode and my contact at BBC America passed this information on to me directly from the authoring house:

"I heard back from the authoring house, and they have confirmed that the pattern you're seeing is a result of the RF interference which was in fact prevalent throughout the filming." :eek:

BTW, I still love this series and I am much happier now that I have been able to reduce the RF effect. :)

A HA!
Yes I suspected as much. I think I said in my original review that it looked like someone was running a vacuum cleaner and it was interfering with the camera.



Fettastic,

Are you able to adjust your display settings to reduce the RF interference pattern as I was able to? It's going to make the falls scene so much more enjoyable if you can.

Fettastic,

Are you able to adjust your display settings to reduce the RF interference pattern as I was able to? It's going to make the falls scene so much more enjoyable if you can.

If by adjusting your settings you mean blurring out the artifacts, I'm sure I could if I wanted to. I'm not going to degrade my picture because the BBC had technical problems while filming.

Those flicker came back on some of the shots on second disc too. It is NOT the helicopter interfering with the picture nor ISO. It's the transfer. BBC should replace those discs. I DID NOT see this on Discovery HD. I can't belive I paid $70 for a inferior transfer than broadcast.

damn

I got my set yesterday. I watched all of discs 1 and 2 and never had any problems with those.

Those flicker came back on some of the shots on second disc too. It is NOT the helicopter interfering with the picture nor ISO. It's the transfer. BBC should replace those discs. I DID NOT see this on Discovery HD. I can't belive I paid $70 for a inferior transfer than broadcast.

To be honest I am reasonably happy with the picture quality although it is not the quantum leap I expected over the standard def set. What I do find irritating though is the much abbreviated material in the HD version. In the standard def. set (which I also have), there is a 10-15 discussion at the end of each segment discussing the particular difficulties /surprises etc. encountered during the filming of that segment. Interesting background material. There is also a disk 5 with another 2 hour plus of material with discussions involving , among other things, the future of these wilderness areas. I expect this material, as well as the 10-15 minute discussions were, for whatever reason, not filmed in HD. but why the HD set purchaser is, in effect being penalized with less material is beyond me.

R.Rachlis

After watching Episodes 1 and 2, I can only conclude that the people NOT seeing the noise and banding either (1) have equipment that isn't full HD resolution, or softens/degrades the image, or (2) are sitting so far away from their display that individual pixels blend together, or (3) aren't watching the same program I am. Sitting right next to a 30" display, where I can make out every pixel, the PQ issues are blatant.

The strong noise occurs mostly in scenes that are outside of bright sunlight, and it looks like high ISO noise, sometimes made worse by obvious cropping (noise gets bigger). Since they used an extreme telephoto lens on many shots (which probably required a ton of light), it's understandable that they had to do this just to get the shot, so it's partly forgivable.

However, even on wide angle brightly lit shots, there is still a subtle white noise throughout the picture, though it's much better and overall pretty good PQ.

The banding is very noticeable on many sky shots, and suggests a poor transfer, since the bit rate monitor shows me a high (> 20 Mbit) rate on those scenes.

When I compare the HD DVD version to the Discovery HD Lite version I recorded from D*, I don't notice the noise there as much, but that's probably because of D*'s smoothing and resolution and bit rate reduction (D* reduces 1920x1080i HD to 1280x1080i, smooths it to make it easier to compress, and reduces the bit rate to around 12 Mbit). On the noisier scenes I can still make out the same noise I see on the HD DVD, though it's obviously smoothed/blurred and a bit pixelized.

Overall a great DVD slightly marred by PQ issues.

I do have a Samsung but DNIe is turned off and the problem that I see is scene related but it's more than just noisy. For example, is the underwater scenes I see digital noise everywhere but it's not too distracting. This is literally static that flashes bright and dark, bright and dark, over and over. Then is switches to another scene and it's crystal clear. This makes me think it's not a defective disc because it should cross over into scenes if it was a physical problem with the disc. Although I'm more likely to experience different problems altogether such as skipping or freezing up actually.

Has anyone tried the specific spot that I mentioned to see what I mean? It's so pronounced that you can't miss it.

weird. i haven't noticed that. i did see lots of digital noise in certain parts of the bat cave in Indonesia, but I mean they were shooting in almost total dark, what do you expect? shoot with the lowest noise Canon DSLR in that cave and you will see the same. shoot with high ISO film and you would have grain city.

(one thingif you use a PC to playback under certain drivers and all if you adjust the display settings for video too bright it can make parts of the image that clip above or below do weird things and flash like white or cyan and stuff.)

I'm glad I didn't waste my money on more of Warner's mediocre PQ.

you are missing out. simply amazing program. looks great (yes, occasionally they have to zoom in on an animal or shoot in near darkness or use SD underwater here and there, but waht do you expect). some of it show distant leaf detail on trees down to like the pixel level!

Woah, 16mm?!? Not even 35mm? We're talking documentary footage in Rattle and Hum level fim res. here!
:eek:


(I keed, but it's true...)

caving is not an easy nor entirely safe environment....

I finally got around to watching the first disc of PE on HD-DVD via the Toshiba A2 at 1080i. It's identical to the BD version off the PS3 at 1080p, right down to the funky vertical bar artifacts at the top of the menu. The artifacts/banding/noise are identical across the scenes I've listed, thus the problem is in the encode, not in the player or format. For what it's worth, I thought the image coming out of the A2 was slightly more detailed 'feeling' than the PS3, though I wouldn't have expected it.

Yes, there are lots of noise, I watch the first 2 disc, so far " The Cave" is the worst.

But You need to understand this is not a movie, they cant spent like 6hrs just to get the lighting right.

There's noise yes, but also got tons of jaw dropping moment, this is a must have HD title for me :)

Just to restate the problem with PE disc. Disc HD had that particular episode and I DVR to see if the problem shows up and what do you know broadcast version does not have flicker screen problem. Yeah right RF interference my a$$.

No one seems to mention the audio problems with this set - at least with episodes 2 and 3 - which is as far as I've gotten so far. I'm hearing periodic "bumps" in the audio track off and on - like bad tape stock, or like mag film would sound if it was worn out. It's quite apparent during the opening titles of episode 2 and 3. And very noticeable at about 18 minutes in episode 2 - just to point out a couple of places. Has anyone else been bothered by this audio problem?

Didn't hear any at reference level.

Here is my quick gallery. I only went through the first disc, I have to assume the rest of the set is equally... "challenged".

Planet Earth: Visual Issues Gallery (http://www.theaterfood.net/galleries/planetearth/)

K, I don't own the discs (have only see the HD broadcast) but your first screen looks liek sharpedning is too high. The gallery, I didn't see banding in the first shot and saw no MB in the bird scenes. So I guess you see some things differently.

Noise is a common occurrence with HD video, nothing you can do about it. Are you streaming it rather than playing it straight from your HD player?

I haven't seen the broadcast version in HD so I guess we can't make comparisons there. I don't exactly blame anything for the problems in bird scenes aside from Warner's use of HD-DVD as the lowest common denominator and keeping the max bitrate too low for those brutal (to the codec) scenes.

All the screenshots were taken by a 5MP camera (Sony DSC F707 -- don't laugh, it still works), off a PS3 sending 1080p via HDMI into a JVC RS-1. There isn't any explicit sharpening going on in the chain, and I haven't measured how much is being applied for those sources (unlike the A2 which does apply a lot). The camera probably is responsible for sharpening artifacts, since it's not top quality.

Note that the screen caps don't show all the nastiness. Noise is indeed unavoidable for many shots with lighting challenges, but there is no excuse for a professional outfit to release this 'ground-breaking' stuff with posterization (even on the BBC-HD logo!!), out of focus shots, and severely mixed video quality even when the conditions don't call for it, at least IMO. I'd rather have seen upscaled DV video from an XL-1 (like lots of nature guys have used as a lightweight alternative) than the grainy 16mm stuff used for the elephant shots on Disc 1. Grain when you're underground in pitch black and shooting video = OK. Enormous 8 pixel-square grain when you're in bright daylight near the equator = !@(*$ retarded. Maybe they are magnifying some part of the frame significantly, but then they should have found that out before it went to final editing and gone back out to get more (properly zoomed) footage.

We might be able to blame Warner for the posterization and noise/blocking on high-motion scenes, but we'll probably never know unless someone has the broadcast version with the same visual issues.

I wouldn't have minded so much if this was a $40 box set, but the thing was as much as $100 from some B&M stores, so we're paying a lot for what amounts to what I call a second-class attempt. Perhaps I should rent a SD-DVD version just for kicks, but from the responses here it seems like nobody wants to admit their favorite video has issues. Just look at how there is instant lock-on for criticism whenever someone mentions their RPTV hasn't been professionally calibrated?

Unfortunately film grain (both natural and artificial) and noise on HD titles seems to be an epidemic, so I have no faith in it for top-tier visual quality anymore, not that I should ever have since this is all money/profit motivated, and not artistically motivated anymore.

It's equipment related, NOT disc related.

Watched Episode 6 the other night which was flawless.

Heck, those horizontal banding lines on my projection screen wasn't the projector. I had to physically clean the screen which had accumulated dust, which combined with rolling up and down, caused the banding.

Finished the first disk of PE. Man, it has so much digital noise in some scenes (mountains and other). That snowy flicker makes it almost unwatchable. I can not believe this crap made it to the final material that was put on the store shelves and sells for more than 60$. Some people say it's settings related. Hard to believe. No settings changes can fix that load of horrible noise. Very disappointed. Those scenes spoil the whole experience of otherwise great documentaries.

I can't believe some people don't see that on their screens. Why is that: do they just not pay attention or is it that they have good disks and we have the bad?