Product Description

This beautifully filmed documentary takes viewers on a journey to the past -- and future -- of America's Great Plains as it traces a conservation project to re-create a region filled with bison, grizzly bears, wolves, prairie dogs and more. Tom Selleck narrates the story of the impressive effort to establish a one-million-acre wildlife reserve, and a CGI segment illustrates the projected results in stunning visual detail.

For the most part, American Serengeti's VC-1 encoded 1080i image in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio is gorgeous to behold. Lovely aerial shots of the vast expanses of The Great Plains reveal awesome depth of field while simultaneously giving us incredible detail. You can literally count the hairs on a backlit buffalo's head and see the droplets of water vapor erupt from its nose as it snorts. Ferrets, Pronghorn and other fanciful creatures are also caught in their natural habitat with impressive detail. As tends to be the case with a lot of these 1080i presentations, you will notice slight shimmer on such typical shots as busy leafwork, and there is some very slight edge enhancement noticeable on footage of tree branches against a fiery orange sky at sunset. Otherwise, this is a solid offering from NatGeo, which always sets the bar rather high for nature oriented documentaries.

NatGeo hasn't quite stepped up to the lossless plate on its Blu-ray releases, but truth be told it may not really have to, as these documentaries regularly feature omnipresent voiceover with pleasant underscore, not exactly the stuff of surround sound heaven. Both the Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes are clear, with easy to hear narration and onscreen interviews. The 5.1 isn't especially immersive, though when we do get some ambient noises from the wildlife, the rear surrounds at least fitfully kick into action. Fidelity here is certainly excellent, though the low end is noticeably shallower than most lossless offerings. These Dolby Digital mixes suffice quite nicely for a television outing like this, but don't expect to be blown away by any overwhelming immersion.

3D Blu-ray DVD Movies Disc - Africa: The Serengeti Features

Video
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1

Audio

Subtitles

Discs
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)

Package Content

3D Blu-ray DVD Movies Disc(50GB) - 3D Blu-ray DVD Movies Disc - Africa: The Serengeti   x 1