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The Series:
The History Channel has really gone down hill recently.
The change of their name to just "History," a
common insult for something that is dead or irrelevant, seems to be an
acknowledgement from the management that their channel is in trouble. Once filled with interesting documentaries and
shows that delved into the past, their schedule is now crammed with
reality
shows like Ice Truckers and Ax Men
(I'm more interested in the 100
year old trees that are being cut down than the men doing it) and
pseudoscience
crap such as UFO Hunters and MonsterQuest. This is from a station that is supposed to be
educational? Well they do still have one
or two shows that are worth watching, and the highlight of their line
up is The
Universe. This excellent series
looks
at, well, our universe. What's in it,
how it acts, and most importantly, how we know what we know. The second season of this show has just come
out on Blu-ray and it's just as engrossing as the first.
While the first season mainly focused on our solar system,
this set of programs takes out farther out into the galaxy and looks at
some of
the impressive objects that exist and looks at some of the many
unsolved
problems that astronomers are still struggling with.
There are episodes on Nebulas, immensely huge
clouds of gas where stars are formed, Supernova, where stars explode
releasing
as much energy as the sun does in 10 billion years, and Cosmic Holes,
not only
black holes but mini-, white, and wormholes that may, or may not exist.
All of the episodes were good in this season, but one of the
more engrossing was the program on dark matter.
If you look at the movement of another galaxy, you can calculate
the
mass of the object based on how it travels.
Yet if you add up all of the matter you can see, the result is
significantly less than the mass calculated by the movement, much
greater than
error could account for. Where is this
missing mass? Scientists have theorized
that there is dark matter; matter that doesn't glow or reflect light,
and what's
more it doesn't seem to interact with ordinary matter.
So, if it's literally invisible and just
about undetectable, how do we know it's there?
Because of it has mass, and therefore gravity.
Astronomers have seen light from other
galaxies bending when it passed through or near large amounts of dark
matter. They've actually used that
property to map the sky and now have charts of where dark matter exists. Pretty impressive stuff.
The show also is up to date and includes the latest theories
and findings often presented by scientists who are currently working on
the
problems and mysteries. Along with a
narrator who holds the show together, each episode features several
scientists
from NASA and major universities. Very
few of the experts are dull or dry, and most of them are able to
express their
love for their discipline in ways that really connect.
That's one of the show's great assets, that
it take pains to be accurate and current, but it also presents
complicated
theories and observed facts in a simple, down to earth manner. Yet it never seems to talk down to its
audience.
While the information is great, the thing that makes this
program so much fun to watch is the impressive visuals.
The show is filled with state of the art CGI
along with some of the most recent photos and images from telescopes,
satellites and interplanetary probes.
These comes together with the experts and narration to create a
fascinating look at the universe we live in.
Engrossing, visually stimulating, and very informative, this is
a show
that is not to be missed.
The Blu-ray Disc:
The second season of 18 hour long episodes arrives on four
Blu-ray discs in a double width case.
Two discs are housed on each side of a 'page' attached to the
spine, and
the other pair snap into the inner front and back leaves.
Video:
Like the first season, this set is presented with a very
nice 1.78:1 1080i image. While some of
the vintage footage and the older (and even more recent) interplanetary
probe
images are understandably not of HD quality the show overall looks
wonderful. The CGI animation is
especially colorful and bright but all of the video is tight and nicely
detailed. There are a few minor
problems. Banding is evident in more
than a few scenes, mainly outer space animation which has light sources
like
planets surrounded by concentric rings of differing shades. There was also a touch of cross colorization
in a couple of spots, but this was very minor.
Overall this is a very pleasing looking set, and it comes across
much
better than the non-anamorphic SD DVD collection.
Audio:
Being a documentary series, I wasn't surprised to discover
that the set comes with only a stereo mix.
There is a fair amount of music in the show and some of the
audio
effects really cry out of a 5.1 mix (stars exploding, comets crashing
into
Earth and other planets etc.) As it is
the music is full sounding and the talking heads sound clean and clear. A nice though not impressive soundtrack.
Extras:
While there is a bonus featurette, it's not that
exciting. This set also includes an
hour-long documentary "Backyard Astronomers."
This program looks at amateurs who enjoy looking at the stars
and the help
that they can give professional astronomers.
While it was interesting, it was only mildly so and didn't have
the
"WOW!" factor that many of the Universe
episodes had.
Final Thoughts:
This series makes science fun and exciting and is well worth
watching. It is able to take complex
ideas and make them easy to grasp as well as putting a sense of wonder
and
mystery into out universe. The Blu-ray
presentation is very good too. Anyone
interested in science or the cosmos should really search out a copy. Highly
Recommended.
Note: The
images in this review are not from the Blu-ray disc and do not
necessarily
represent the image quality on the disc. |
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Buy: