Customer Reviews

The Universe: The Complete Season Four

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first three seasons of this show were really much better than the fourth season. In the fourth season they have gone much more
into speculation and sensationalism with much less real science.
Still, it is interesting and worth watching, just don`t expect too much from it.
Call it three and a half stars.

I owned the first three seasons of this EPIC series on dvd and had been disappointed by the double black bars (fullscreen letterbox) presentation of this series. A quick fix was to change your zoom settings on your set or player, but this fix was quite awful in what seems to be lower than a 480i resolution.

This product on Blu-ray is awesome, it contains all 12 episodes of season 4 plus additional never-aired segments presented on 3 Blu-ray discs.
Episodes include:
(Disc 1) Death Stars, The Day the Moon was gone, It fell from Space, Biggest Blasts
(Disc 2) The Hunt for Ringed Planets, 10 Ways to Destroy The Earth, The Search for Cosmic Clusters, Space Wars
(Disc 3) Liquid Universe, Pulsars and Quasars, Science Fiction/Science Fact, Extreme Energy.
Bonus features include; Meteors: Fire in the Sky, Comets: Prophets of Doom.

The Blu-ray release of this series is truly wonderful in full 1920x1080 HD. This is a true widescreen release. The audio is presented in lossless 2.0 Dolby Stereo.

The graphics and special effects can be and most of the time are the best of any production I have ever seen. It stands alone in comparison to anything the BBC, NOVA, The Science Channel, or The Discovery Channel has ever created.

If you are interested in a mind blowing, educational, heavily entertaining piece of eye candy, then do not pass this product up.

Imagine that you work for the History Channel. Suppose that your job is to put together a DVD set for season four of one of your prestige shows; one that looks great on your HD network and really serves to highlight what an excellent network you have.

If you were this person doing this job would you:

A: Release this DVD set as anamorphic, so that when people watch it on their 47" screen the image takes up all the screen and looks spectacular.

B: Release this DVD as non-anamorphic so that either people have to see a stretched version where all the planets are ovals instead of spheres (which they aren't actually, but that's another issue), or they have to watch it both letterboxed and pillarboxed in order to see everything in the correct aspect ratio?

If you selected B, I think the folks at History might have a job opening for you.

"The Universe", the TV show, looks great when it airs on History HD and is really entertaining and informative. I love everything about the show, even if this current season focused a bit much on the "gloom and doom" aspects of space and not as much on space science. I have the first three seasons on DVD and love watching them.

But, well, they're non-anamorphic and that's just not acceptable. This will, as a result, be the last DVD set of this program that I buy until the folks at History wake up and give the show a proper DVD release.

5 stars for the show. 1 star for the DVD set.

I've watched all 4 seasons of the Universe so far, and I was left disappointed by the third, rest assured the fourth is much better. Even when re-treading old subject matter, they still make the episodes relevant and interesting, often updating old facts. The world of astronomy moves fast, so this is a good thing.

I recommend this if you're the least bit interested in our universe, and/or how it works. Even if you're an astronomical genius (I'm not), you'll likely find something new or interesting in this.

The Universe series is a terrific series and I've enjoyed them all. Outstanding graphics, photographed and computer generated; and wonderful specialists who speak on a variety of topics. Very high quality material and geared for those seeking general knowledge as well as those enthusiasts who really enjoy studying what makes our universe what it is.

Having already bought the first three seasons in dvds, I wasn't warm to buy a fourth one.

When I saw that it was released in blurays (I had just acquired a bluray reader), and as the Amazon description mentioned it was close captioned in English (unlike the ones I had), I tried the experiment and bought it.

Until now I have got only good surprises : the blurays are working on my machine, altough it's not free zone, and I understand everything because of the subtitles.

I don't share some opinions of fellow buyers : I think it's a wonderful serie, even if we can discuss the fact that there is too much noise in the deep space where the silence is supposed to be king ! At least if you believe what Stanley Kubrick put in "2001".

For me as a foreigner without possibility to see this serie aired in France, I thanks Amazon.com which permits me to see it. To be true, it's possible to see part of this serie in French : the total released in France is related only to the solar system and lasts 5 hours. The American edition embraces far wider subjects and lasts more than 40 hours.

As a lover of astronomy, but not at all a scientist, my choice is quickly made in favour of the American edition. and maybe I will rebuy the first three sesons in blurays because at least two of them are subtitled. I must also admit that the spoken English used on my dvds is not difficult to understand : scientists are speaking very clearly. But the close captioning could be of some help for my wife.

In conclusion : a good job of History Channel.

I recommend foreign and American amateurs to buy this fourth season in blurays.

This is like a sequel, not as good as the original. It is better than season three because some new ideas are explored but is not comparabe to season one and two.

The first three seasons of The Universe was a good watch. By the fourth it seems as if the producers? have run out of things to show and the same topics/subjects are reviewed. Basically a rehash of prior material in a little more depth and detail, which in my opinion is not worth the time. I'm not sure about the the direction of the budget being used on a CG space craft flying around and even showing heads up display, to me in a documentary, it really serves no purpose. There is new material but a few episodes are rehashed.

The worst part is the use of analogies for almost everything. I can't remember whether it is season four or five now but the analogies get a bit ridiculous, it's as if the script writers are treating their viewers as imbeciles.

An example of an analogy used was (I believe it was season in 5) "a heard of sheep are like liquid, when in a group it's like the molecules are not moving much. Hence it's like a solid example ice. When they are free to move around they are similar to a gas example hydrogen".
Another is "a new car is similar to a new born sun" (is it really???)
"it starts of with a full tank" (actually a car has an empty tank when brand new)
"when the sun uses all it's hydrogen atoms it starts to expand, by then it starts to fuse helium another source of fuel. That's sort of like a car, I've run out of gas.. but I have a spare tank in my boot. That's similar to the sun when it starts using helium as a fuel source" (totally lost me there)

To sum up
First season - excellent
Second season - excellent
Third season - good though there is some rehashed footage
Forth season - ok... more rehashed footage, more analogies
Fifth season - awful I feel as if they are insulting my intelligence or treating me as if I am an idiot

In season four/five there are one of two good episodes, but the bad ones out number the good. Honestly I do feel the last two has dumbed down a lot. If you are a fan of the first three season, my recommendation is not to bother with season four and five.

I use the entire series to bolster the content of my high school Astronomy course, and Season Four is a worthy addition to the previous three. The topics in this season have gone a bit more to the spectacular and speculative ends of the spectrum, covering topics like astronomical apocalypses (several episodes deal with ways to destroy the Earth), space wars, and exotic liquids in the universe, but they are definitely entertaining and my students always enjoy getting to view some or all of the relevant episodes. I own all 4 years of episodes (purchased out of my own pocket in fact, even though they are for school primarily) and recommend these highly. I just wish they would do them in the hinged metal case again, like they did for Season 2 - the slipcases of all the other seasons tend to spill out at inconvenient times...

The graphics are good and it is easy to imagine how the universe really looks like .
The series has many different narrators .

Some of the episodes are more interesting, others are a litte strange like '10 ways to destroy the earth' - but fun nevertheless.