Planet Earth - Australia

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Starring: Planet Earth
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Type: DVD
Studio: DVD International
Release Date: 2002-03-19
Floating hundreds of miles above Australia... Load this DVD, sit back, and relax while watching beautiful Australian landscape filmed in digital video and original 5.1-channel instrumental music. It's heaven! Featuring spectacular video of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand taken from the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station. Australia includes more than 80 minutes of breathtaking imagery, complemented by Aboriginal music composed and performed by David Hudson.

Planet earth video
The Planet Earth videos were wonderful and everyone should watch them. This one focuses on Australia and if you've ever been there or have an interest then it's a good view.

Possibly will grow on me
Stimulating- yes, brilliant and beautiful- definitely. But understand you are not going to have a particularly "Australian" experience with this DVD. The images are shot from so high that unless you have spent a lot of time in planetary orbit, there is precious little to really identify anything of where you are. A quite nice aussie theme soundtrack sets the mood, although smooth jazz with added didjeridoo sounds a little silly at times.

The visuals were created by a drifting magnification over high-tech still images- like scanning Landsat posters with binoculars from across a room. This presentation technique is intriguing but becomes a little unnerving at length, like viewing abstract art. The let's-figure-out-what-we're-looking-at feeling intrudes for me.

However, allowances for the particular intent of this unique presentation. And it IS amazing to see the beauty of the planet beyond the scale of recognizable surface detail.

On DVD playback, a nice little feature of hitting the menu button anytime for a description and stats on any particular view helps somewhat. I wonder if more could have been done with familiar imagery here to dimensionalize the whole experience.

On DVD ROM playback some interactability and the above info continually onscreen, but with the images unfortunately also shrunk way down to accomodate.

Disappointed
While I personally, very much appreciate and enjoy the spectacular images of earth as photographed from space, I would also have appreciated, indeed expected, intelligent and expert commentary. My children were bored to tears after ten minutes, as were the adults. I had this feeling that we were somehow "stuck" in a preview mode of the overall program. True, the soundtrack is both soothing, and well matched to the visual. But the absence of commentary soon makes you feel as though you're listening to the sort of trendy, cosmic whatever that you might hear in,...well, your dentist's office. Bummer.

A response to esstee's review
Thanks for the nice review. One comment though. All of the NASA images used on the Planet Earth series are available for viewing on any DVD-Video player or DVD-ROM computer. On a DVD-Video player just press the MENU button any time you see an image on screen you like. This will take you to a detail screen for that image. If you want to see a full screen version of that image just press the UP arrow and the screen will now show the original NASA image in the best resolution that a DVD-Video player can display. Pressing the MENU key again returns you to the frame of video where you left off.

Higher resolution versions of each image are also available to users that have DVD-ROM drives, but it is important to note that all DVD-Video player users have access to the same images that DVD-ROM users do, and at the highest level of quality possible on a DVD player.

Thanks

Ralph LaBarge
Producer, Planet Earth: Series