Planet Earth - The Complete Collection (Blu-ray Disc, 2007, 4-Disc Set)

I own both the BBC and Discovery versions, and they are both a feast for the eyes. Be wary, as the runtime, narration, and resolution for the different editions are EXTREMELY dissimilar!!

Be VERY careful, as just about EVERY version you find on ebay (and shipping within the USA) will most likely be the shorter running Discovery Edition, which mostly has a monopoly on the US market. If you want the BBC version, you typically have to purchase online through a british vendor (ie Amazon.uk). The BBC version is well worth an investment (if you must choose between the two), especially since you can usually procure it for about $35-$40 USD when the dollar is strong against the pound.

Concerning 1080i vs 1080p:
Both state on the box that they are 1080i capable--this is not entirely true. The BBC version is mostly in 1080p, while some extras and bonus content are encoded in 1080i. For the Discovery version however, the entirety of the videos are in 1080i due to poor encoding.

David Attenborough BBC Edition:
Most people prefer his narration because he put a lot more heart into it. However, some find this edition annoying because he talks more than Sigourney in the US version. NOTE that this version has an extra 10 minutes added to EVERY episode when compared with the truncated US version as seen below. This features an extra bonus disc that isn't available with the Discovery version---so this includes 5 discs total, and 2 bonus episodes.

Sigourney Weaver Discovery Edition
While most people are disappointed with her narrating style (not as much "acting" and emotion in it), most will agree that this is not a BAD version. The intros to each episode are more beautiful than the generic version for the BBC edition, but each episode is missing an extra 10 minutes due to US programming/commercial issues. This version does NOT feature any bonus content (as in the dvd and BBC blu-ray versions). There are 4 discs total, and is overall the weakest investment of the Planet Earth Collections.

I'll keep it short: both Planet Earth and Blue Planet are the most enlightening series about our planet that anyone could see. Whether 5 or 50, these images will teach an appreciation for this pale blue dot we all live on.

The Planet Earth was outstanding. My husband recently bought a big screen TV and the picture was so true to life. It revealed that God made a provision for every singly living creature out there. I am purchasing a set for furture viewing and sharing with others.

Planet earth takes you further in depth than any other TV show or series I've ever seen. There is really nothing else like it. From the oceans to the mountains and everything between, you will be amazed at the beauty never before seen.

this is a fantastic set. i recommend getting the BBC version with Attenbough...much better than the discovery version with sigorney weaver.

Wonderful series.Spectacular color and clarity. Draws you in and makes you feel as if you are right there during the filming. Would highly recommendthis DVD to any one who loves nature.

Review done by New York Times
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Nature often looks better at a distance. “Planet Earth,” an 11-part mother of all nature series to be shown on the Discovery Channel for five consecutive Sundays, beginning tomorrow night, understands this truth. The BBC, which produced the series with Discovery, used helicopters, long lenses and all manner of cutting-edge film techniques to bring us the photographic spoils of a five-year global odyssey.

Often the filmmakers show Earth in the most flattering light. In Antarctica “the cliff tops are stained pink,” the narrator Sigourney Weaver says, “with the droppings of tens of thousands of nesting penguins.”

Seen from afar, the droppings look lovely. But “Planet Earth” does not always see waste matter through rose-tinted lenses. Close-ups can be equally dramatic.

In a cave in Borneo the camera ranges across what appears to be a moving mountain. This, Ms. Weaver explains, is a 300-foot-high mound of bat droppings, “its surface carpeted with hundreds of thousands of cockroaches.” One would have been enough.

The cockroaches eat the droppings. Occasionally something bigger drops — a bat, say — and the cockroaches eat that too. This brings us to the last element of the trinity of nature shows: beauty, repulsiveness and bloody slaughter.

“Pole to Pole,” the first of the series’s hourlong episodes, is a scan of the planet, a précis of things to come. It includes serious evidence that the natural world, however wounded by global warming, continues to be red in tooth and claw. A wolf captures a caribou; a snow leopard (the species is rarely seen) eats a deer; and a seal falls prey to a shark.

It’s a jungle out there — except when it’s a desert. Early on, a tired, thirsty elephant calf trudges alone through the Kalahari Desert, following its mother’s tracks — in the wrong direction.

The elephant is going to die, but we don’t see that on “Planet Earth,” just as we don’t see a wounded polar bear expire, although we know it will. This series skillfully takes us to the brink of heartbreak and then pulls way back — letting us relax and revel in long shots of caribou migrating across the Canadian tundra — or hones in on a cute family of kangaroos licking their skinny forearms to cool off in the 120-degree heat.

The severest climates and most monotonous landscapes on Earth seem to produce the cuddliest animals. Polar bears, seals and penguins populate the poles; kangaroos, big-eared foxes and long-lashed dromedaries enliven the desert. It is as if nature evolved to accommodate a nature show.

The planet, of course, is changing faster than its inhabitants’ ability to keep up with it, and that sad fact colors many of the episodes. As the polar ice cap shrinks, polar bears must swim farther than ever for food. This leads to the aforementioned bear’s quixotic 60-mile voyage to find dinner: in this case, an ill-judged attack on a walrus herd.

Among this series’s many rare feats is that it often encourages you to root for the predator rather than the prey: fitting at a time when the planet itself seems as vulnerable as a newly hatched penguin.

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Excellent service and quality of the product. The filming technique itself is a top-notch quality and the Blu-ray technology is unsurpassed. We all love the topics and the picture quality. Hope Discovery airs the program again in HD. The seller is trustworthy and would certainly be doing business with him again.

Well just like all the other Reviews here i've got to say the Transfere to Blu-Ray is almost faultless and you can't help but watch this in awe, but where are all the extra's that Planet earth had on DVD, all you get is the basic episodes and nothing else, yet on DVD you get the making of each episode and loads of other little features that make it a great package. They couldn't have run out of space as Blu-Ray's are supposed to hold upto 50GB so why have they been omitted? Spoiled want would have been an ultimate Blu-Ray package making it just Average.

This version has the original narration by David Attenborough which aired on the BBC, not Sigorney Weaver like the Discovery Channel version... Excellent video quality on the Blu-ray transfer... There are a couple very short scenes which are in SD due to the camera not being able to handle the depts of the oceans... My only gripe is this should have been on dual-layer format which would have only taken 2 discs; instead it's on single-layer 4 discs...

I bought PE because it was recommend to me by a biology proffesor of mine, he claimed that some of these animals we would never see again... (at least not in their natural habitat.)

Planet Earth covers a large scope of areas with beautiful and memorizing pictures that will leave you breathless. Nonetheless its forte is also its weakness, since its very generalized you wont learn much detail, or much at all.

The bonus features are a plus. PE provides you with the inside the details about how painstaking it was to shoot for all those countless hours.

Blu-Ray + HDTV + Planet Earth = the BEST pictures. Plain & simple, a must buy, especially since in Ebay that prices are nearly 60 percent off original MSRP.

Planet Earth is probably the most amazing nature documentary of all time. The BBC did a fantastic job filming this series in high definition and the Blu-ray version is one of the best discs you can buy. The 4 disc set covers the entire series of 12 episodes and contains jaw dropping natural scenes unlike anything you've ever seen before. One thing to note if you watched the series in the US on Discovery Channel is that the blu-ray and dvd versions have a different narrator than when they were broadcast. The discs are narrated by David Attenborough while the US broadcast version was narrated by Sigourney Weaver.

Nice scenery!
As of its release in early 2007, Planet Earth is quite simply the greatest nature/wildlife series ever produced. Following the similarly monumental achievement of The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this astonishing 11-part BBC series is brilliantly narrated by Sir David Attenborough and sensibly organized so that each 50-minute episode covers a specific geographical region and/or wildlife habitat (mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, seasonal forests, etc.) until the entire planet has been magnificently represented by the most astonishing sights and sounds you'll ever experience from the comforts of home. The premiere episode, "From Pole to Pole," serves as a primer for things to come, placing the entire series in proper context and giving a general overview of what to expect from each individual episode. Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming--a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact. With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New

quality of picture and sound cannot be matched, scenery is priceless, very well narrated. I wanted to test my new unit with something that can be enjoyed over and over.

I rarely give an excellent rating to a dvd or movie, but this series deserves it and we haven't even watched the entire set yet. My wife and I were astounded by the HD clarity, the views/perspectives, details and narration. A dvd like this can only be truly experienced and enjoyed on a big screen HDTV in high definition. Absolutely stunning!

I want to start off by saying...WOW !! Planet Earth's first episode "From Pole to Pole" provides an overview of the entire series. It whisks us from the Antarctic to the North Pole, and a variety of climes in between, without simply repackaging footage from subsequent episodes. We're given a glimpse into the lives of Emperor Penguins, Polar Bears, Great White Sharks hunting sea lions in breeding season, the nearly extinct Amur Leopard of Eastern Russia, a massive herd of caribou in North America, a pack of wild dogs on the hunt in Africa, and other rare and fascinating species. As the episode titles indicate, the remainder of the series focuses on specific ecosystems and the wildlife they nurture. Each episode is a glory of high-definition cinematography that utilizes new technology to capture vivid imagery from distances that give us a window into animal behavior sans the disruptive influence of camera crews tromping through their habitats.

Like all nature series, each episode of Planet Earth draws its dramatic intensity from the relentless struggle between life and death—and the show is, indeed, dramatically intense. Placid shots of achingly beautiful flora, fauna, and sprawling landscapes are juxtaposed against the never-ending contest between predator and prey. Planet Earth is absolutely riveting, but not for the feint of heart. The most dramatic and controversial of its violent set pieces is the "Great Plains" episode's difficult to watch encounter between an elephant and a pride of 30 hungry lions. Shot in the dead of night, the sequence delivers a palpable sense of terror and raw savagery that evokes equal parts sympathy and fascination. Best of all, the show's genuine drama doesn't rely on anthropomorphizing the animals. It simply presents them as they are.

It is the astounding breadth, scope, and depth of Planet Earth that makes it revolutionary.
"Ocean Deep," "Ice Worlds," "Jungles," or any of the other episodes have the smarts and substance to hold their own against similarly themed Discovery Channel documentaries. That each of the unique episodes is woven into a sprawling but cohesive 11-part whole makes Planet Earth a unique and special snapshot of the planet on which we live. Combine that with the show's innovative and surprisingly intimate cinematography and one need only watch a few minutes of the first episode to realize that nature documentaries will never be the same. In terms of supplements, each episode of the series is followed by a 10-minute featurette detailing the production of one of the episode's segments. Though brief, the pieces provide a concrete sense of the new technologies used to deliver the show's stunning views of nature, as well as the trials suffered by the various crews trying to capture rare footage in remote parts of the world.

A fifth disc contains a follow-up series called Planet Earth: The Future. Split into three episodes—"Saving Species" "Into the Wilderness" and "Living Together" The whole show runs approximately two and a half hours in length. It assembles a group of environmental talking heads to discuss the ecological ramifications at the heart of Planet Earth. This 11-part examination of the majestic beauty of Earth's remotest landscapes and rarest species is guaranteed to take your breath away. As I am running out of caracters to finish my review, let me say Planet Earth is the most impressive nature show I've ever laid eyes on. If you're a fan of the genre, it's a must-see.

If you have purchased a Blue-Ray player, then you will
want to own this disc.Some of the scenes will take your
breath away. You will spend many hours watching this one.
Both the picture and the audio are great.

While this was a wonderful production, dont be fooled into thinking it is the one on tv currently. It is supposedly the same production, but with David Attenborough narrating and some segments have been renamed, it has also been reported that the Discovery channel version has been edited for time and content, if you want the new one, wait for the Discovery Channel release sometime in May....The new one is done with Sigourney Weaver, and is updated with Planet Earth the Future as seen on the Discovery Channel.....its worth having both, but make sure this is the one you want! Not sure what other changes there might be or what other differences, the broadcast here was also done in a different order...wickopedia has a great explanation! Hope this helps!

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I am very pleased with this purchase. It is a great way to show off the power of blu-ray and your HDTV. Breathtaking views and very hard to not watch the series in one sitting.
If you are a nature fan with Blu-ray it is a must own.

This is a must have collection, Lots of high def scence of the wonderful world we live in. Learn about landscapes and animals. You will see beyond of what you already educated or saw on television.This is a must have dvd and I highly recommended

The photographic effects are awesome!
BUT- Although I realize that nature can be pretty brutal and many animals do have to eat other creatures in order to survive, whoever put this together seems to have a morbid fascination with some gruesome scenes. they seem to dwell much too long on some rather unpleasant scenes - such as predators eating their prey and great white sharks chomping down on dolphins - was it really necessary to slow it down 40 to 1 ... and show it over and over? If they really had to include those gruesome scenes, it would have been much better to put all of them in a separate section so that those who are interested can view them and others can skip them.
AND- the sound is terrible! The music will blast you out of your seat - but then you can't even hear the narrator - so you have to have the volume control close at hand.
Also, there are some scenes that are repeated.
But - as mentioned previously, the photographic effects are truly awesome!