Big Cat Diary on Animal Planet HD

Although I don't watch the show, don't you think Animal Planet, like the other Discovery networks, needs to show much more HD content than their current lineup? When I first heart our cable company was obtaining this channel, I was excited. But when I actually tuned in, most of their programming was SD. And don't get me started on their new logo.

Animal Planet HD needs to do a better job of bringing quality HD programming.

I searched and this was the only post I could find related to 'Big Cat Diary'. I have only been watching the past 3-4 weeks since I started to get Animal Planet HD and I am hooked on this show. It is a very interesting and educational show that also has a 'soap-opera' kind of feel to it. I can never wait until the next episode to see what is happening with the different characters (or cats).

I can't decide which cat(s) I like the best. I love the speed of the cheetah's, the independence of the jaguar, the family/pack mentality of the lions.

Great show and great 'hosts' as well.

I also just started watching this show when I got my HD TV. Ive seen 3 weeks of episodes and absolutly love it but Im have trouble getting caught up and figuring out when its on. I was DVRing it on Wedensday but now its not on, its on Friday and only for 1/2hr. Also the last Wedensday episode I saw Bella was alone, Honey had her 3 babies and Tamu had her (4) now 3 cubs and was still trying to get into the marsh pride. Then Friday, only 30mins, they show Bella with an almost fully grown male cub, no honey, and no marsh pride, very little stuff from the Ridge Pride, which I thought was new but from the BBC site it seems to be from back in 2000 and/or 2005 I cant figure out which . I looked through the BBC site but That seems to be behind because they talk about multiple marsh prides, and multiple male lions.

Is there a DVD collection the goes from the begining of the series? I know it wont all be in HD but I still would get it (I have an upconvert DVD player any way which does a pretty go job and will play differant formats)

Any clarification or direction would be much appreciated

I think you mean leopard, not jaguar. Jaguars are mostly a Central and South American cat but are moving north through Mexico to the Southern US.

stonewall55, I checked and there aren't any DVD sets for previous seasons from either the BBC or Discovery shop.

This is a great show. I also enjoy the drama that the various cat species go through.

Wonder why previous seasons are "semi-zoomed" - the show has been 16:9 SD on the BBC in the UK for many years, so would only require upconversion with no zooming if 16:9 SD masters were used. I guess it would need zooming if 4:3 masters containing 14:9/16:9 letterboxing were used - but I'd have been surprised if AP sourced 16:9 shows in 4:3?

This season ended the week of the 6th. Anything you are watching now or last week (week of the 13th) are repeats. I’m not sure if they are doing the repeats in chronological order or not.

But the SD is 16:9 - same as HD - no need to zoom or stretch if you have the SD 16:9 sources (Not a 4:3 letterboxed source)...

Sure there can be blanking timing errors on the extreme left and right of frame which show up as small black lines of varying width on the extreme left and right of frame. However these will almost certainly be masked by display overscan (even on HD panels).

Also some upconverters may incorrectly take the 720x576 rather than 702x576 section when scaling to 1920x1080 or 1280x720 (702x576 is 4:3 or 16:9 - 720x576 is slightly wider and used for digital SD to avoid cropping transition edges)


Are you able to take screen shots or post grabs? Be interesting to know if it is 16:9 SD or 4:3 SD letterbox zoomed.