Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: NATIONAL PARKS America's Great Idea in Blu Ray

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-28-2009, 04:56 PM:

I just watched the first part of Ken Burn's NATIONAL PARKS America's Great Idea last night on my local public television station in high definition and was very impressed with what I saw. I plan to watch some more tonight after I finish viewing a rental movie. The series will become available in both DVD and Blu Ray next week and I will eventually get the BD version. What I saw last night in 720i of all the new digital footage along with reproduction of vintage photographs of Yellowstoine and Yosemite National Parks was fantastic and they along with all the rest of documentary in 1080p should be awesome in Blu Ray. I have other documentaries of Ken Burns on DVD including THE CIVIL WAR and WORLD WAR 2 and I think this one is more interesting because of it's natural history topic and gorgeous photography.

-Claude

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 09-29-2009, 09:25 AM:

Episode one looked fine, but watching Episode two last night had way too much color saturation in all scenes. The B&W and maps, graphics, etc. looked good, but all of the color photography looked like old hand colored postcards. My hi-def TV is not mis-adjusted, as all other material, regardless of source, is ok.
Did anybody else get this impression?

DM

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-29-2009, 12:01 PM:

I enjoyed it all so far. I'm lucky to have been to many of the National Parks and that we have as many here in You-Taw as we do. It's certainly one of the reasons that I live here. I believe there are 7 National Parks within 5 hours radius drive time of SLC!

As for the color... It was fine here in HD and even so thats still an adjustable feature on HDTVs. It's very possible the station did not have the content set up properly.... Sad but commercial broadcasting today doesn't have the criticality that it once did... cable is far far worse!!

Mark

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-29-2009, 01:01 PM:

It looked great here in HD last night when I viewed it on Hawaii Public Television. I do not know how it is scheduled in your area but it is shown twice here. The first show starts at 7:00 and repeats at 10:30. I like the schedule very much because it gives me an opportunity to watch a movie and after it is over, I can switch to cable television and watch the program. I intend to watch the remaining episodes as it airs and buy the show on Blu Ray. I just learned, it will be available at Costco next Tuesday for about $85.00 but Amazon's price is almost $10.00 cheaper.

-Claude

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-29-2009, 01:50 PM:

Just one point of order, it wasn't shot digital, it was Super 16, believe it or not.

I thought the format had all but died.

Apparantly "Crash" on Starz is shot on S16 too, as well as a smattering of others.

I need to catch the entiretly of this. Have only caught bits and pieces, and not on the HD set.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-29-2009, 05:26 PM:

Ken Burns must be Steven Speilbergs first cousin... he always shoots on filum...

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-30-2009, 12:28 PM:

Watched again last night and the colors were again fine but there was an occasional clicking sound in the audio. Some sort of digital doo-doo going on I suppose. I don't think it was off air interference beause the program after that was fine. Anyone else hear this clicking sound? Was wondering of it's originating from PBS or from each local station???

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-30-2009, 07:12 PM:

Mark,

I had a lot of stuff to watch last night so I did not get a chance to see all of last night's episode of NATIONAL PARK, America's Great Idea. I did not notice anything wrong with the audio from what little I saw so I guess your local PBS station was having sound problems.

-Claude

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 09-30-2009, 07:17 PM:

Comcast has been having major system-wide problems with their digital delievery system here for several days now. The video is loaded with what they refer to as "tiling", looks like what happens when a DSS satellite signal is on the threshold of dropping out in bad weather. Also audio dropouts. This is happening on virtually every digital channel to at least some degree, was still going on as of this morning.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-01-2009, 01:18 PM:

I have both Comcast and off air HD and when I visited the Farnsworth Peak transmitter site recently I learned that Comcast gets their local feed signals from the KUED and other off air signals... Its kinda funny because if KUED and the others in that complex go off the air so does Comcast. Not much advantage to cable there....

Mark

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 10-01-2009, 01:54 PM:

So far, every episode has played fine. No problems with HD picture or sound from WNET in Manhattan.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 10-01-2009, 03:01 PM:

Mark, have you ever been able to tell any difference between OTA and Comcast's feed, on the same station? I've tried and even though everyone says Comcast squeezes the b/w, I can never tell any difference.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 10-01-2009, 04:31 PM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I have both Comcast and off air HD and when I visited the Farnsworth Peak transmitter site recently I learned that Comcast gets their local feed signals from the KUED and other off air signals... Its kinda funny because if KUED and the others in that complex go off the air so does Comcast. Not much advantage to cable there....

Were you expecting them to get their local feed from somewhere other than the local channel? [Confused]

And I imagine the people who want cable and asked for local support probably just want it because they like the simplicity of not needing to switch between the cable/rabbit ears for getting local stuff.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 10-01-2009, 04:52 PM:

quote: Chris Slycord
Were you expecting them to get their local feed from somewhere other than the local channel?

Since it's digital, seems like there would be a technical advantage to using a direct feed to Comcast over fiber or something, as opposed to pulling the signal out of the air. Might not be feasible in all markets though.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-01-2009, 05:15 PM:

quote: Chris Slycord
Were you expecting them to get their local feed from somewhere other than the local channel?

Exactly! I was not expecting them to be re-broadcasting the ATSC off air signal! Just shows what a bunch of cheakskates Comcast is. Alot of the HD stuff around here is also on the phone company's fibre optics system and in fact according to one of the the transmitter engineers Comcast was offered that option when the facility on the Peak went in but Comcast declined. In this case if Farnsworth went down then the cable transmission would keep going. Most of the stations here in SLC have both fibre optics and microwave links up to Farnsworth Peak but up there the problems are more power related than not. Even with the UPS and Huge back up generator available power bumps occasionally upset things.

Mark

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 10-02-2009, 05:29 PM:

I know Ken Burns from the Telluride Film Festival. I have been listening to him talk about National Parks for three years. I was waiting on pins and needles to watch it.

But as usual I find Ken Burns documentaries to be simultaneously fascinating and deadly boring. I haven't been able to sit through the whole series. My wife just finds it boring.

I think he belabors a point and uses the same images over and over again.

Perhaps If I get it on Blue Ray I can watch a half an hour at a time. I think it would be great if the disc included a cliff notes version.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-02-2009, 05:48 PM:

I was not willing to admit it but I too find Ken Burn's documentaries a little boring. I have CIVIL WAR and WORD WAR 11 on DVD and have watched bits & pieces of both programs a from time to time but I find it very difficult to sit through it and watch a lot of it at a time. The same goes for the current National Park show. If he could only focus on the subject matter with narration but the use of people popping up all the time with their comments is very unnerving.

-Claude

Posted by Damien Taylor (Member # 4255) on 10-02-2009, 07:12 PM:

Jazz was a masterpiece, however...

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-03-2009, 02:10 PM:

quote: Damien Taylor
Jazz was a masterpiece, however...

Its the music in it that made it a masterpiece!!!

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-03-2009, 03:03 PM:

The series has concluded it's PBS broadcast and I watched the final episode last night. I did not get the opportunity to watch the series in it's entirety during the past couple of nights because I was watching something else or sleeping through parts of it when I tuned in. sadly, I missed the segment about our two national parks, Hawaii N.P. and Haleakala N.P.. The only thing I saw was scenes of Kilauea's lava flow at night at the beginning of Episode One.

From what I had seen, I have changed my mind and will not be getting the series on Blu Ray. Although it must have been a fine show, I do not think it is worth spending the amount of money the set costs.

-Claude