This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio Notes - Update
Rating	Exempt
Year Released	2000
Running Time	Unknown
RSDL/Flipper	Dual Layer	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection, then Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Martyn Ives
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision Australia	Starring
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$39.95	Music	Ernie Wood

    The programming on offer here is:

• Man In Space
• Space Frontier - the birth and development of the space race, taking a very abbreviated look at man's first steps into space from the rockets of Robert Goddard through Yuri Gargarin's first orbit, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
• High Life - the first steps into a permanent presence in space with the Mir space station and the Shuttle program and what it means to future exploration.
• Where Next? - assemble a few trillion dollars and what can we do and where can we go? A look at the new space station and the X-33 program (the new, cheaper reusable shuttle) and even further into colonization of the Moon and Mars. Also, not content on stuffing up our own little planet, speculates on us playing around with the climate on Venus.
• Pioneers
• Breakthrough - a look at some of the men and their contributions to the current understanding of the cosmos and the development of astronomy in its various forms. No, I am not being sexist - no women are mentioned.
• Earth Patrol - a look at what all those pieces of space metal in orbit above the Earth do for us and our understanding of our little blue-green speck in space.
• Robots - the cheaper alternative to space exploration (sort of): a look at the robots we cast out into the void to explore our solar system and maybe even beyond.
• Cosmos Focus
• Hubble's Eye - throw a telescope into space and what have you got? A look into the very depths of time and space, albeit after a repair mission to fix the mirror which was stuffed in the manufacturing process. Probably the most expensive bi-focals the universe will ever see!
• Light Fantastic - we get so used to being able to see things that we sometimes forget that visible light is but one small part of the spectrum. This shows what those other parts of the spectrum can tell us.
• Milky Way - seems odd to have an episode about a chocolate bar... An exploration of the galaxy with the ultimate aim of proving how utterly insignificant our part in the Universe really is. At least it is sort of comforting to note that if we were immortal, the Sun will not go supernova on us (hint: it's a wimp).
• Deep Space
• Infinity - and you thought commuting to work everyday was the pits. Try working out how far it is to the edge of forever, even if you know how.
• Big Bang, Big Crunch - no, this is not about the other week and the consequences thereof in about nine months time. More like what happened a long, long, long time ago before there was even a galaxy far, far, far away, and what might happen if the elastic band decides to stop stretching.
• Black Holes, Dark Matter - whilst it may sound like your finances, it is actually about galactically super dense objects (no, not your mother-in-law) that won't let anything escape (we know it as the Australian Taxation Office), not even light. They also seem to talk a lot about the missing 90% of the Universe, the matter that we can't see. Which actually does sound a lot like my finances...

Video

    The main issue with the transfer is that once again it is all over the place as far as sharpness is concerned, although not quite to the extremes of the first DVD. Whilst some sections are quite sharp, and therefore show plenty of detail, there are segments that display a distinct softness and lack of detail. The main noticeable improvement is in the CGI work, although it still has to be said that it is far from perfect - and in some instances is appallingly simplistic (hopefully for clarity's sake rather than any other reason). Some of the archival film is not especially wonderful, some looking worse than I have seen it before. There is a fair deal of grain on display at various times here, albeit less than the first DVD, and overall I really could not call this a clear transfer at all. Shadow detail is not much of a problem at all. There appears to be some degree of low level noise in the transfer at times. Again, there is infuriatingly no time information encoded into the transfer and there is no proper chaptering, and therefore there is no real reference points to work to - other than to say these problems crop up in all four episodes on offer. It is for this reason that I again cannot give you a running time for the DVD.

    Whilst this is still an improvement on the first DVD, there are the occasional lapses from the bright and vibrant transfer I was expecting. Overall, I felt this to be a little lacking in this regard, and this is perhaps no better illustrated than in those Hubble photographs. If you check out the aforementioned Stargaze - Hubble's View of The Universe, you will see that the colours here are simply not as rich and as vibrant and it does detract from the overall presentation - no matter how much better it is in comparison to the first DVD. There did not appear to be any serious issue with oversaturation here, and there was no hint of colour bleed as far as I could see.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There is an intermittent problem with film-to-video artefacts, with a fair degree of shimmer at times. This is especially notable in the CGI work and does again detract from that part of the documentary. This seemed to be far less afflicted with film artefacts, other than in the archival material and it was not much of an issue in the overall scheme of things.

    This is a Dual Layer format DVD, as there is no readily apparent layer change during any of the program material.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue in all soundtracks seemed to come up pretty well and there were no major issues with understanding what was being said. For the record the narrators on the various soundtracks are: Michael Goldfarb (English-American), Jon Snow (English-British), Ingrid Drissen (Dutch), Patrick Floersheim (French), Achim Hoeppner (German), Natsuo Tokuhiro (Japanese) and Josep Gaya Sans (Spanish).

    The music comes from Ernie Wood, and once again in keeping with the first DVD is quite innocuous.

    Really there is not much comment to pass on any of the soundtracks. They do the job that is required of them and not much more. Being so heavily dialogue-based, they are quite frontal sounding, but this is not all that unexpected given the style of soundtrack offered. In this instance, there did not seem to be any surround channel use at all.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Notes - Update

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
25th February, 2001.