Planet Earth documentary series

Love them!

You've seen them? I'd love to hear more about them from someone who has. Is the footage in that clip pretty typical? The camera work is consisently at that level? Because that shark scene is almost hard to believe it's real.

It looked like there were several planet earth clips in your link kermit. I watched several...fascinated. All pretty amazing, though you'd be hard pressed to top that shark/seal bit. Holy.

I love the Discovery Channel. Maybe Sigourney Weaver's droning narrative will grow on me.

I'd watch this series. Looks great.

Agreed. Lotta good scenes, shark scene is tops. After I watched those I did some googling. Coming on here pretty soon...March 25. Good stuff.

http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/planetearth/planetearth.html

This is the most amazing show I've ever seen. Everyone should see this and it should be required viewing in schools.

It makes me, as a human being, feel very small and insignificant.

A good description. As they mentioned in one of the episodes on Sunday night, we always hear about what a small or "flat" world we live in today, but after seeing the footage in Planet Earth you truly realize what an amazing and large world it truly is, not to mention how ignorant we are of everything out there.

The new filming technologies and needless to say the HD make this one of the best programs I have ever seen. From the shark footage to being able to follow the African wild dogs hunting in packs from a helicopter, I have enjoyed every minute.

Also, from watching the behind the scenes clips afterwards, I give a ton of credit to the cameramen, I sure as hell couldn't live in a cave surrounded by bats for a month.

Here's the homepage for Planet Earth, with some good clips.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth/

Recording them as they are broadcast on Discovery Channel and have watched two of them twice. Incredible cinematography and without any CGI, some of the shots still look unreal.

It's funny you should mention CGI; we (or kids actually) are so used to seeing incredible things on tv and in movies that aren't real. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not computer graphics!!

Good call on the unreal shots.

My favorite scene so far has been the snow leopard chasing that billy goat thing down the mountain. Watching those guys move so fast, amazing. Makes you realize how little I really know about these animals, or these places.

This series makes me happy to have On Demand television.

Mo and I have watched the "Pole to Pole" episode a dozen times.

I've recorded the shows but have only watched the one with the snow leopard.

You know what really got me about that snow leopard?

When she was coming home, and greeted her cub, who looked every bit as big as her, but still unable to hunt and care for himself.

You could just feel the love she had for her baby.

This series was shot with the state-of-the-art high definition cameras. Hi-Def isn't always what it's cracked up to be -- now that 1080p is here (that's as many pixels horizontally as well as vertically), there are no broadcasts as of yet but I believe the series is shot in 1080p and will be on HD DVD and/or Blu-Ray disc in the future. Of course, even down-scaled to 1080i, it's a spectacular picture. I've seen in at the showroom on a 55" Hitachi Plasma and a 90" Sharp DLP front projector. Just mind-boggling, you-are-there, images.

All that talk about "the circle if life?"
Guess who's not a part of that? Man.
I think mankind could completely disappear from the face of the earth and no one (meaning any other species) would notice.

In fact, the world would be a better place without us. Humans are like parasites on the planet; we take what we need and leave nothing behind.

We think we are important in the whole scheme of things, but in reality we are just a pain in Mother Nature's ass.

I'm finally catching up on some of these. Haven't caught them all yet. The look of this show is spell-binding. I believe it was National Geographic that did an entire show about the sharks leaping out of the water to catch seals. So I'd seen this before. But this was closer, sharper, and slower. I actually got to see what was really happening. Wow.

I had to wonder as I watched whether there is any living creature on this planet that doesn't have to struggle for survival.

I'm looking forward to catching the episode with the snow leopard. It's rare to see them at all, let alone capture them on film, let alone capture them on film hunting.

I have been watching the shows in hi-def. The shots ARE spectacular. Last night, on one of the segments, it showed three guys climbing Mount McKinley in the snow.

Two of the guys nearly died from hypothermia, with one of them falling down the mountain (while he was attempting to get help for the other guy.)

What I wanted to know is................when all this was happening, who was taking the pictures?

The camera technology that they used was amazing. They have that camera at the bottom of a helicopter (Heli-Gimble) that gets a lot of shots from above. It's pretty cool to read about the filming preparations for this.

We watched "Shallow Seas" last night and I was awed by the great white. It was literally unreal. I have never seen anything like that before in my life.

Just watched Shallow Seas in the tivo.

Holy crap.

That's incredible television.





I mean, forget about anything the networks manufacture for you each week, this stuff is amazing. Totally transporting.








Really makes me miss the ocean a lot, though. I lived where those great whites lived. And then where the Orcas are.



Lake Michigan is just a big bucket. And people fish in the little streams that run by the zoo and the vet school............. I miss my salmon! I miss my live Dungeness! I miss the ocean air!

But I'm also glad I'm not a sand dollar.