7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Where in the world can you find the strangest and most deadly sharks? Why do sharks sometimes prey on humans? When are you most likely to be attacked? And what can you do to avoid becoming shark food? If you're hungry for answers, join the experts and some of Discovery Channel's bravest hosts as they go swimming with the ocean's most feared predator to answer all your biting questions.
Documentary | 100% |
Nature | 86% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
It’s 1989, I’m on a family vacation at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and three emotional disasters befall me. First, enormous sharks are being spotted offshore and reported on the nightly news. Second, I watch Jaws on VHS for the first time, and my seven-year-old brain reels in horror. Third, our hotel television picks up The Discovery Channel and, you guessed it, this week is Shark Week. There are few things more traumatic to a child than seeing gaping flesh wounds spew gallons of blood, and few creatures more frightening than the shark, that restless vampire of the deep. Needless to say, my days at the beach were spent at the water’s foamy edge, building sand castles and collecting shells while my dad and uncles boogie boarded. It took me years to get over my shark-o-phobia, but by the time I was twelve, Shark Week was a summer staple, and I ate up the gory underwater footage with a wild-eyed, pre-teen glee. The Discovery Channel’s annual ode to the ocean’s greatest predator is now in its 21st year, and I still have a guilty-pleasure obsession with the svelte eating machines, though my interests have veered slightly from the blood-in-the-water shark attack shows to the episodes concerned more with conservation and protection. I was pleased, then, to review this latest Blu-ray release of Shark Week, which compiles six HD programs that examine various facets of the shark’s threatening—and threatened—existence.
"We're going to need a bigger boat."
Better than the DVD and the original HD broadcasts, Shark Week nevertheless suffers some minor issues from having six hours of 1080i, AVC-encoded material crammed onto one BD-50. The bandwidth can't handle all the traffic, and while it's not distracting by any means, there are some instances of noticeable macroblocking. Digital noise and other artifacts seem confined to darker dives, though, and while edge enhancement is present at times, there's nothing cringe inducing. Fans of Shark Week likely know what they're in for—HD footage (with some SD archival stuff) from a variety of programs and source materials, some better than others. Mythbusters, for instance, looks a good deal cleaner than Dirty Jobs. Planet Earth this ain't, but that's okay. Colors are reproduced realistically—the deep ocean blues look particularly great—and the only tonal mishaps I noticed were some white balance issues during Mysteries of the Shark Coast, when the crew was shooting inside their ship with incandescent lighting, but had natural sunlight flooding into the cabin as well. For what it is, Shark Week is sharp and sufficient, though it's never going to be HD demo material.
Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World is no misnomer, as there's very little going on audio- wise beneath the cresting whitecaps of Shark Week's oceans. There are some bubbles and bass-heavy swooshes added in post, of course, but the underwater footage does little to pump sound out of the disc's DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track. Fortunately, the on-land and ship segments give the mix some breathing room. Like the video quality, the audio varies from source to source and some of the programs are more dynamic than others. These are TV mixes through and through, though, so don't expect bombastic, cinematic splendor from the sound. Rear channels are used for music and some ambience—the lapping of waves, bubbly gurgles, etc.—but the presentation is largely front-heavy. All of the programs rely heavily on narration, and voices are pleasingly articulated and clear, though wind and waves can occasionally muffle the on-location chatter. While Shark Week doesn't have the biggest sound, it's acceptable for TV work, and I was never distracted by any overt audio slip-ups.
This year's Shark Week release includes three bonus episodes. Unfortunately, they're all
presented in full-frame standard definition, with MPEG-2 encodes.
Shark Attack Files IV: Summer of the Shark (50:01)
Examining a few of the attacks that took place during 2001's "Summer of the Shark," this
episode
ponders who was in the biggest frenzy—the sharks or the media.
Dirty Jobs: Jobs that Bite (1:21:00)
Host Mike Rowe devotes this episode to the men and women who earn a living dealing with
sharks.
Rowe cage dives with great whites and tags them off South Africa, performs a tiger shark
autopsy,
and tests shark repellent in the Caribbean.
Dirty Jobs: Jobs that Bite Harder (41:44)
Mike Rowe fishes for dirty shark jobs once again, and hauls up gigs making molds at a south
Florida
taxidermy company and testing an anti-shark suit in the Bahamas.
Shark Week has always had a somewhat tenuous message—mixing educational, let's-take- care-of-our-oceans programming with downright, get-the-hell-out-of-the-water shark-sploitation— but I love it all the same. While the only outright scientific episode in this edition is Mysteries of the Shark Coast, all of the segments are entertaining, occasionally enlightening, and provide lots of impressive underwater footage. While this Blu-ray release isn't objectively spectacular in the AV department, Shark Week fans will have few complaints. And with a well-suited summer release, Shark Week is just in time to terrify your kids—or the kid in you. Recommended.
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