Africa (2012) (BBC/DVD)

David's done it again.This is beautiful. The videography is breathtaking, capturing the most minute detail in wildlife that we could never imagine. So educational and enables one to explore the wonders of this world from their own house.

This documentary strikes a perfect balance between entertainment and education. The film shows events that have never been filmed before like an unforgettable fight between male giraffes over territory, which just sticks in my mind. This is like no other documentary I have ever seen. It concentrates more on the unique behaviors of animals by region as they interact with their own and other species. It shows some less well known animals and interweaves them with the more common ones by showing their dependence on each other, like lizards waiting for lions to sleep to catch flies off their faces. Unlike many documentaries, all the action here takes place against gorgeous panoramic terrain backdrops of endless blue skies, desert sands, and rain forests.Some parts are funny, heart warming and make you feel like hopping a plane to Africa just to see all of this. Others scenes are so unique and amazing that you'll have to replay them just to believe what you saw. The 6th episode, "The Future" is more sobering as you realize that all of this great beauty and diversity could just cease to exist. There are also a couple stories that are sad and even distressing, where you wish the photographers would just do something. At the end of each episode are 10 minute "Eye to Eye" segments that explain how the filming was done.Africat is as in depth as previous BBC series with more of a focus on animal behavior. It is well tied together with excellent and informative narrative and the video and audio will blow you away. It does not repeat footage from previous BBC series. The use of slow motion photography and outstanding macro work really show off HDTV capabilities and blu-ray technology and allow one to silently marvel at the form, adaptation, and splendor of these rarely seen in nature animals. David Attenborough is at the top of his game and while he appears in a some of the scenes his main function is as a trusted and familiar companion joining us on this magnificent adventure that was four years in the making.NOTE: This series aired in January on the Discovery Channel but with a different narrator, Forest Whitaker. Some scenes were cut in order to allow for commercials and the length of the time slot.UK RELEASE: This has also been released in the UK but as a 3 disc set with an UV and digital copy. It is also narrated by David Attenborough and contains the same 6 episodes. It appears that the episodes are just spread more across the 3 discs. I heard it contains the same extras BUT the run time is 15 minutes shorter than the US version? (UK digital copies are not playable outside the UK)

t is no secret that if you want to use your HDTV to the max, you attach a blu-ray player to it and then play one of BBC's nature documentaries. When I first upgraded to a HDTV in 2009, I watched Planet Earth, and it was an experience to behold and enjoy. When I upgraded to my new LG Plasma Display, I picked up Africa just to see.What makes the BBC blu-rays so great is that they're made and formatted for the standard HDTV screen. Movies are formatted for the 1:37:1 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 HDTV aspect ratio, and as a result when you watch a movie, you get black bars at the top and bottom of your image, which means that Baraka, for instance, while being mastered in 8K before being down-sampled to 2K, looks gorgeous, you don't quite get to make full use of your 1080p display compared to what Africa or Planet Earth provides.Africa comes in 6 episodes, with 3 episodes per disk. Each episodes spans an hour, and covers the Kalahari, the Svannah, Congo, Cape, Sahara, and a wrap up episode that covers the bigger picture. Each episode comes with a behind the scenes section that's about 10 minutes long. The footage is nothing short of amazing, including Starlight cameras that reveal the nocturnal behavior of black rhinos, and a slow motion capture of a battle between 2 giraffes in a desert.I'm normally very impatient with every "behind the scenes" documentary, because most of the time I'd watch them and say, yeah, you had a multi-million dollar budget, good for you. But some of the footage that the series provided were so jaw-dropping that I actually looked forward to the "behind the scenes" documentary. In one of the episodes, the crew shot silver ants in 50C heat in the Sahara desert, which looked brutal as heck.I wasn't looking forward to he last episode, because normally these documentaries tend to be a huge downer. After all, nearly every non-insect species featured in the TV series is nearly about to go extinct (one good reason to own this Blu Ray). But the last episode was actually surprisingly optimistic, including detailing a huge multi-country plan to surround the Sahara with trees to prevent further desert incursions.All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series. Since you can't easily stream the series without losing video quality, the best way to enjoy it is to borrow it from a friend, rent it, or watch it over the air (though I'd be surprised if the presentation is better over the air than from a blu ray).Highly recommended.

Really insightful and a beautiful documentary of the animals in Africa.Beautiful narration and I hope they do more.

Je possède pas mal de documentaires dans cette collection BBC Earth (anciennement BBC-2E).Pour ce qui concerne l'Afrique, j'ai déjà 1 bluray : The Great Rift, peu connu en France.Ce coffret Africa est composé de 3 blurays avec 7 chapitres :-disque 1 : Kalahari- Savannah-disque 2 : Congo-Cape-disque 3 :Sahara-The Future-Outs of AfricaFilmés en HD et publiés en 2013, les chapitres reprennent la forme classique de cette collection Earth. La durée du chapitre proprement dite est d'environ 48-50 mn, suivie d'un making-of de 10 mn, soit au total 58-60 mn pour chacun des 7 chapitres.La qualité de l'image la beauté des paysages et le fait de prendre des vues aussi proches des animaux me bluffent toujours.Pour ce coffret, c'est toujours Sir David Attenborough qui fait la narration.Gros problème : l'audio est anglaise , et les sous-titres pour malentendants sont également en anglais.Jusque là pas trop de problèmes en ce qui me concerne pour comprendre.Mais dans ce coffret la BBC a compliqué l'audio en rajoutant de l'audio descriptif non sous-titré !Attention à se retrouver dans cette arborescence.Coproduite avec France Télévision, et déjà diffusée me dit-on sur France 5, l'éditeur aurait pu faire l'effort de mettre des sous-titres français.En attendant pour un prix pas trop élevé (19-20 € sur Amazon France) ne vous privez pas de ce magnifique coffret en bluray sur cet énorme continent où la faune est en danger. Vous serez récompensés par la qualité du spectacle sur vos écrans HD.

日本盤のアフリカが少々高額だったので、不安ながらもインポート盤を購入しました。一言で言えば購入して良かったです😄BBC好きの私には納得のいく素晴らしいBlu-rayです。

Excelente en todo: la calidad de la producción, los animales seleccionados, la edición, la narración, el "como se hizo" al final de cada capitulo.... Attenborough en su máxima excelencia. Y esa escena de las jirafas es sublime!. Una obra maestra en documentales de naturaleza

No need to describe this 6-hour series in detail, since Dr. Joseph Lee has already done that accurately. However, BBC Earth fans might wonder how much of this new series overlaps with previous work such as the  BBC Atlas of the Natural World  series on Africa, the Great Rift series, and the African sequences from various other series such as Planet Earth (and i've seen them all). The answer is that most of the content here is completely new -- that is, it documents the lives of animals (and plants) that have not been shown before -- and even the familiar folks (elephants, lions, wildebeest, giraffes, meerkats, chimps) are shown doing things we've never seen before. The few bits that have been covered before are seen and heard here in such intimate and spectacular detail, and with such intense drama (thanks to superb editing and David Attenborough's peerless narration), that each comes across as a whole new experience.The presence and immediacy of the soundtrack is especially astonishing, as are the night shots, which are startlingly high-def. Equally amazing is the range of scales, from the opening shots which take in the whole continent down to the microphotography of some amazing insect behavior. Add to that the mix of time-lapse and slow-motion sequences and you have six hours of stunning surprises, including 10-minute sequences showing how the dedicated BBC camerapeople got their shots. In short, i can heartily recommend both this new series *and* the previous BBC work on Africa (even if it's 10 or 20 years old) because there is very little redundancy in the whole collection. This new set takes a great tradition into new territory in a way that is more spectacular, more intimate and more dramatic than ever before. BBC Atlas of the Natural World