I borrowed from a friend the SD copy of Planet Earth. First of all, it's no contest regarding PQ, obviously - having lived with multiple viewings of my BD copy, looking at the SD is like watching the flick through Vaseline covered glasses.

What always bothered me, however, was that BBC/Warner UK eschewed the extras in order to fit the set on 4 discs. I'm going through the "diaries" right now, and I have to say...

...they're almost as good as the series itself.

If you haven't already, find a copy on SD. Rent, borrow, whatever. They are 10 minute little gems, beautifully capturing the trials of capturing these images, told with an appropriate mix of detail, precision, and humour. It's is a complete and utter shame that these were not included on the BD set, they are as critical as any one segment of the series.

If there's anyone that has any pull at WB or BBC (Amir? :) ), please find a way to get us these diaries on a legit disc without needing to buy the entire SD set. To have these as a mail-away BD/HD-DVD would be well worth the price of a single title - make it a pre-order, internet only thing, I don't really care. Heck, I'd even take it as a compendium SD-only title.

Given the tremendous success of this series on HD, it's a shame that we, the early adopters, must sacrifice such excellent content in favour of supporting these nascent disc formats.

FYI: Those extra 10mins "making of" were shown in HD on the BBC-HD showing.

As for the documentaries, it's a damn shame they didn't include the 5th disc, even in SD. For the $100 MSRP list price of both sets they should have thrown it in there.

I enjoyed disc 5 too, a wake up for many, I hope.

Too bad disc 4 of HD/BD only takes ~14 GB, so they can definitely use remaining 10 GB for SD set disc 5, why they did not do it :( In addition, bookmarking does not work on this set. We paid big bucks and were treated as 2nd class citizens :-(

BTW, the "infamous" Sun lit sky banding scene looks pretty much the same on SD version as my HD DVD version, and no way near as bad as a picture posted in other thread.

...yeah, I was going to get into that - first thing I did was go to the sun chapter, and, yeah, saw the banding, even on my CRT RPTV that's far more forgiving for such things. I'm not downplaying the banding, it's pretty terrible on BD as well, it's just that it's on the SD at the same time. Actually, for me the most egregious scene for banding or lack of detail is the Nautilus swimming into the dark on the Ocean's Deep episode (33:14 or so), where the black detail is such that it clips, as a curve of black comes in from the top left that basically zeroes out, leaving this weird black banding thing.... I'm looking at the SD now, and it too is still evident, clearly on the same master they used, and no doubt a limitation of the camera tech used to film that scene. If I'm going to focus on the 5 or 10 seconds of footage that's a little bit less-than-perfect, especially when it's HD that actually reveals the imperfections in all their High-def glory, then I'd be seriously, seriously missing the point of this series.

On a related note, the next person that complains that the polar bear mom and her cubs doesn't look sharp should -really- look at what the dudes had to do to shoot that scene... all without being eaten themselves. Astonishing.

Meanwhile, I just finished the last of the diaries, I've yet to watch the fifth disc, but after seeing a guy take a hot air balloon into a 200ft tree a couple times, I just -had- to rant again that these weren't included...

BBC (that's the official Beebs) could've insisted that Warner made the same exact content on HD discs with the DVDs. The decision lies with Warner.

From what I was told, the diaries were also shot and broadcast in HD. BD50s could've easily fixed that. 4 BD25 costs about US$5.20 ($1.30 each) according to one replicator's costs. 3 BD50s with the diaries in HD would have costs US$4.35 ($1.45 each) with a total space of 150GB.

Here's the kicker: 4 BD50s at US$1.45 each would have cost Warner US$5.80, 60 cents more than 4 BD25s. This 200GB space would have allowed higher video bitrates, the diaries in HD, subtitles up the wazoo, AND both Attenbrough's and Weaver's narration tracks.

Reference to the BD replication cost can be found here. (http://wesleytech.com/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-replication-costs-analyzed-again/113/)

http://wesleytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/replicationcosts1.PNG


fuad

On a related note, the next person that complains that the polar bear mom and her cubs doesn't look sharp should -really- look at what the dudes had to do to shoot that scene... all without being eaten themselves. Astonishing.

I noticed you could occasionally see what looked like "heat waves" in the air during the polar bear segment which indicated to me they were filming at quite a distance with a pretty powerful zoom lens. Would you agree? Regardless, you are absolutely right: it's an amazing thing to get that kind of footage at all, let alone in the quality we are seeing on the high def versions of PE.

Oh, and thanks for the informative post.

Bradley

There's a lot of great eye candy in P.E. Ignoring the problem of falling asleep every 30 minutes, making it difficult to watch the whole thing (I still have not finished disk 1 after 3 attempts to watch it) When I'm awake, I do go oohs and aahs every few minutes though.

I don't see banding often in BD/HDDVD disks with my gear, but it's surprising to see them here.

There's severe banding problems on a few clips that stands out more because the panouts are very impressive. So you can gasp at the birds eye view of hundreds of thousands of birds flying or caribou, but it doesn't take long for the scenes with sunlight to bring it back to earth.

I agree it's shameful to omit the extras on high def release. Since the BD and HD DVD sets are reported to have been selling well I don't think Warner would care about giving us the extras. In fact I don't think some of the people at the studios really care about what we the consumers want. They predict that AV enthusiasts would buy them anyway with or without the extras.

Perhaps there will be another release with the extras included. :rolleyes:

Here's the kicker: 4 BD50s at US$1.45 each would have cost Warner US$5.80, 60 cents more than 4 BD25s. This 200GB space would have allowed higher video bitrates, the diaries in HD, subtitles up the wazoo, AND both Attenbrough's and Weaver's narration tracks.

fuad

wow, you see, thats the kind of amazing advantage blu-ray has, and it hurts that its not being utilized. really stings. hopefully in a year this won't be the case though.

wow, you see, thats the kind of amazing advantage blu-ray has, and it hurts that its not being utilized. really stings. hopefully in a year this won't be the case though.

Really stings, huh?

Somehow I doubt BD50 is going to guarantee pristine quality and all the extras you ever dreamed of, but one can always hope.

Try not to forget the proverbial glass is still mostly full. I think we are fortunate to have the Planet Earth series released on HD optical, despite some of the extras not being included.

Bradley

I noticed you could occasionally see what looked like "heat waves" in the air during the polar bear segment which indicated to me they were filming at quite a distance with a pretty powerful zoom lens. Would you agree?

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!
Great to see you posting here. Thanks for the fantastic work you guys have done, keep it up !

Well, the only beef was about lacking extra/disc5 from HD/BR set.

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!


Couldn't you have fed them an ITV presenter or two? Would have kept them distracted while you got some great shots, and a nice service to the UK broadcast industry generally.

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!
Wow, pretty cool. As mentioned, nice to have you here sharing your insight.

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!

Hi! Planet Earth was fantastic - I hope that the BBC can get the cash to do fund more great programmes like this... when HD finally becomes widely available in the UK I'd rather not have it dominated by crap like Big Brother!

Do you know if any of the BBC back catalogue will make it onto HD (broadcast or on HD DVD/BD) - e.g. Life on Earth, the Living Planet etc. I guess it depends on whether they were shot/edited on film or SD video.

cheers,

Aitor

I was HD Supervisor on Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393597/) , and yes it was shot with a VERY powerful zoom lens for the Polar Bears.

Polar Bears are fast and hungry!

I guess that was my point above - I'm always delighted every time I see that crazy Scottish git traipsing throughout the land, either sitting patiently waiting for a snow leopard, holding Ewan McGreggor's hand up to look at polar bears in Northern Manitoba, or, in this case, schlepping a humungoid lens up a mountain to shoot some bears waking up...

Planet Earth is one of those fabulous BBC productions that just makes me happy to be alive and on Earth, it's pure cinematic and aesthetic pleasure. As a film nerd, however, it's all the more painful that the human stories of capturing these images, stories that do nothing less than VASTLY improve the already wonderful series, are left off the BD/HD DVD release. I've now watched the Diaries several times each, and it galls me to no end still that they're left off the HD box. Sure, the 3 part end doc is a bit precious, but the diaries themselves enrich the production to such an extent that it's downright criminal they were left off.

Please, if you have any pull whatsoever with the people that put the set together, please express some poor Canadian's regret that he's left without the stories of the storytellers on his High Def presentation, and that the same mistake should not be made when they (lord hopes) dig out HD versions of the Life of... series, Blue Planet, Galapagos, etc.

ps. As the HD supervisor, can you provide any insight into some of the more glaring issues that some have pointed out? I'm not talking things like softness or focus issues, I'm talking things like the banding of the sun in the pole-to-pole, the clipping on the nautilus scene, etc. Anybody who focuses solely on these issues and avoids the title is, in my humble opinion, a total freakish moron, but at the same time it's fair to say that there are problems with some shots where it's not necessarily intuitive that there -would- be such issues.

Just to clarify Earth is a feature film which uses material shot as part of the Planet Earth project.

I worked with the digital conform of this material from the camera original assets to create a 2K master for grading.

I was not involved with the TV series post production or the subsequent Blu-Ray/HD-DVD release of Planet Earth, so can't comment on this.

oh, good lord, I missed the link... Still, I'll take it as a personal favour if you let (Mr? Sir?) Fothergill know how pissed some of us are at the missed opportunity...

Huh, so, as I read this it's a truncated version of PE, made for a theatrical run, in the hopes of replicating the success of March of the (anthopomorphized and poorly narrated) Penguins. Best of luck, you certainly deserve it more than that silly, silly film...

FYI: Those extra 10mins "making of" were shown in HD on the BBC-HD showing.

Discovery HD in the States also showed these 10 min. featurettes.

The extra 10 GB on disc 4 should of been used for the making of features. The audio track on Planet Earth is DD 448 kbps, with such a low bitrate they should have included Sigourney Weaver's narration in addition to Attenborough's.

...just finding an, um, "alternative" method to add these to my collection. Boy, I'd love to actually buy these in HD...

ps. Doug Allan is my hero. There, I said it. But he still looks like a Scottish git. :)