Customer Reviews

A View From Space With Heavenly Music [Blu-ray]

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

 

 

Buyer beware. I expected an hour of HD images from space. Instead, a viewer gets a blast off sequence and a 10-15-minute loop of images from space repeated four times. I also wanted "a view from space"--not long, hand-held shots of the shuttle's empty cargo bay with a shaky moon in the background. Also, there are distracting blobs, spots, and smears on the camera lens and on the viewing portals. The fourth time you watch the Sahara (or whatever desert it is) through what looks a big bug splat on a windshield, one really wishes that the video was a rental instead of a purchase.

Images and videos are, that's true, breathtaking. High-definition from there is gorgeous but it's not 60 minutes of unseen footage, but only 10 minutes in a loop, sometimes with different color filters, so you're buying 10 minutes of space views, amongst which 3' are the liftoff part. Pictures quality is great (taking in account where and how it has been shot) but it's not worth that price.

This DVD is a ripoff. It only contains 14 minutes of video, which loops over and over again.
Then the soundtracks don't correspond to what's on the cover. They mix a bunch of music played in a classical style and call it Bach.

For less money you can get the Blu-Ray disc Blue Planet - filmed in Imax with much higher resolution, Walter Cronkite narration and over one hour of unrepeated, unlooping high resolution video from space.

The video imagery is spectacular. The music was not exactly what I was hoping for. I would have preferred a bit more meditation and airy type music options. Hence the 4 instead of 5 stars.
There is one particular sequence that I loved. From space, a slow zoom into a white-capped mountain was fantastic and takes your breath away as they zoom and and zoom out. This is where the Blu-Ray hi-def showed its value.

I purchased this video expecting stunning views from space, and I got that. But it was not "one hour" as advertized, rather it was a 3:45 launch sequence followed by 14:53 of original footage from space, followed by three repeats of about 14:30 each from the space view footage. Despite the claim in another user review, this repetition has nothing to do with consecutive orbits, it is merely re-use of the same footage. Even the most casual observer can notice the repetition of such distinctive scenes as a zoom-in on Mt Fuji, or the dumping of the urine holding tank. I would have given this disc a five-star rating if it had the promised hour of original video. As it is, the crystal-clear views from space and the 8 hours of great 5.1 surround music warrant a four-star rating. As a relatively new Amazon customer, I have found by experience that it pays to check out the customer reviews, as they will tell you things the promotional information will not.

One must buy this for the music. The video is only 15-20 minutes and repeated several times in each music part. I expected all different video for each music part.

This is a unique disc with beautiful classical music from the world's greatest composers allied with breathtaking views of mother earth from space.
While listening to the glorious music your imagination is also expanded by the sights of mother earth unrolling before your eyes.
A special and wondrous experience.Great listening.Great watching.Great experience.

I give this one three stars -- and that is being generous, I believe. Why? Because, after about the first third of the video, the scenes keep repeating: the camera shots show the same portions of the earth over and over and over and over. There are only so many times that one can enjoy the sunrise on the horizon of earth, or the scenes of the desert (Middle East, it would appear), or cloud formations over the ocean. What's there is nice to see, but there needed to be much more variety than just seeing the same old thing over and over again. I think the editor of this product did a lousy job in not providing more shots than he did. The music was also nauseatingly repetitious. I would not recommend this film to anyone other than someone who might buy it to keep a cat or dog entertained for several hours while the owners were out shopping. I had expected much more than I got.

The video in Blu-ray is stunning. However, one might reasonably expect more from this video than the same video over and over and over with nothing more than a change in music played in the background.

What a rip-off.

Even to this aerial view and space buff and classical music enthusiast, this product with its minimal and repeated ad nauseum video loop is, I am sorry to say, a total waste of your money. A big zero ripoff.