Africa (2013)

[skylog]

Originally Posted by rammsteinfan

I love the part with the spring bucks or whatever they were called from Episode 4. Just watching them jump for joy had my family laughing for a while.

Great show. Cant wait to see what next years Survival series will be like. Hopefully Attenbourgh will still narrate.

i hope as well. i have a good friend who is a rather prominent expert on bears. he helped produce an upcoming bbc release that should be out in the coming months, or so i was informed. in our discussions, he said by all accounts, attenborough may be done. needless to say, sad news, but hopefully that news will turn out to be false.

that said, i kind of got that sense watching his latest "life stories" work. fingers crossed.

[hazelwu]

Originally Posted by vocalhouse

PBS Nature recently showed Attenborough's Life Stories. It had clips of how he started, technical advances in filming and sound that allowed him and the team to get those footage, and things that they got away with

[Show spoiler]like taking home an organgutan

. The BD will be released next month.

Is the Life Stories not the same as this one? https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Atten...Blu-ray/62070/

[skylog]

Originally Posted by hazelwu

Is the Life Stories not the same as this one? https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Atten...Blu-ray/62070/

i am almost certain that it is, it seems as if all of the screen shots are what i saw watching on PBS.

[riktuin]

I was very glad to discover that it is indeed David Attenborough who is narrating the American bluray version of Africa.

[true.harv]

Watched the first three episodes last night. Absolutely amazing!

[karzai]

According to the official review, there were minor noises in this film during shots taken at the blazing savanah and kalahari but when I watched it, it was quite disappointing to see very conspicuous noises.

I thought my player was malfunctioning or something but they were the same noises I saw in Planet Earth, Life, Frozen Planet, and Human Planet so I thought they really were a glitch from BBC.

Maybe BBC didn't realize it but maybe they are using the same dysfunctional camera for those shots. I think it's time to replace those cameras, if any of the BBC staff happens to read this review.

Some shots were recycled from Planet Earth and Life. I'm very positive about it. Overall, it is still a great copy. It has been my tradition to acquire a BBC set every year and although I am quite disappointed with this one, except the scene where the father ostrich led his brood to a water hole and a panorama of an unbelievable collection of wild animals is revealed as if they were told to pose (I paused the frame and stared gaping at it for about 30 minutes. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my whole life) and the giraffe fight, it is still way better than any film. I downloaded a 13-GB Hobbit copy and it was better than the Africa blu-ray video but I will always choose Africa over Hobbit any time of the day.

We can always forgive the shortcomings because it is not easy to film wildlife without disturbing them.

I have a 5.1 system with Monitor Audio RX6's, RX Centre, and RXFX surrounds and a Hsu Research VTF3-MK4 Subwoofer. The prodigious low end effects are truly scary, and there is a strong participation of RXFX. The elephants' low frequency rumbles are perfectly reproduced by VTF3-MK4. I could not have wanted a better subwoofer. The rhinos' shrieks are something I have never heard before but they sound like rowdy little children. I am not sure if they were perfectly reproduced by the RX6's but I'm pretty sure that the narration is putting a stress on David Attenborough. His voice really shows the signs of aging but he is pushing himself to do it. Perhaps he is thinking that because his time almost up, he needs to leave a legacy that will last forever. Honestly, I don't know how I could go on if David Attenborough died.

To sum up the audio, the quality of encoding was the best BBC has ever had to date.

If I were to rate it i'd say Video-3/5 and Audio 5/5

[nycomet]

Does the USA edition include UV digital copy?

[hqn102]

Originally Posted by nycomet

Does the USA edition include UV digital copy?

yes flixster only not vudu enable yet

[Bluyoda]

Originally Posted by skylog

bbc has many natural history/nature titles; the most recent, popular, comprehensive and available on blu ray being:

planet earth
life
frozen planet
human planet
africa

as well as the titles vocalhouse mentioned. check out the reviews here, and if you decide to purchase, i suggest you get the titles that have attenborough doing the narration. he is a joy to listen to.

i hope that helps

I have all of them, including the LE of Planet Earth.
The picture and sound quality has gotten progressively better over the years.
PE is the worst in terms of PQ and sound quality, at least the initial DD release in the US.
Africa is mostly brilliant, although some PE (unused) shots have definitely been used here as well, as a few shots/sequences are considerably noisier than the new footage, but overall it's easily the best so far.
Frozen Planet is pretty stunning too. I never thought it could be very interesting, but they made it amazing.
Love David as well. He is really funny.

Originally Posted by Dubliner1

Just fyi, I received the UK version yesterday...and it includes 3 blu-rays discs (US release has 2).

The content is identical to the US version, but the audio and video might be better.
The UK version has a 24bit soundtrack listed, while there is no info about the US version. Could someone find out the HZ/bits of the US release?
Also, someone mentioned the bitrate being much higher in the UK?
It's listed

[skylog]

Originally Posted by Bluyoda

I have all of them, including the LE of Planet Earth.
The picture and sound quality has gotten progressively better over the years.
PE is the worst in terms of PQ and sound quality, at least the initial DD release in the US.
Africa is mostly brilliant, although some PE (unused) shots have definitely been used here as well, as a few shots/sequences are considerably noisier than the new footage, but overall it's easily the best so far.
Frozen Planet is pretty stunning too. I never thought it could be very interesting, but they made it amazing.
Love David as well. He is really funny.

i agree with everything you said. i am hoping that a new series may be in the works/coming. i have been seeing him doing some work, so maybe david has some more to give us. a great mix of knowledge and humor, no doubt. a quite talented family, those attenboroughs.

[goeagles5039]

Is the one that is on sale at Best Buy for 9.99 the Attenbourough verison?