Scenic National Parks: Yosemite Blu-ray

Scenic National Parks: Yosemite

 (2008)

Documentary

Yosemite

This mesmerizing program ventures into the heart of Yosemite, a legendary landscape of soaring granite peaks, towering sequoias, and thundering waterfalls that are among the world's tallest.

Wild National Parks

Bear watching in Alaska, discovering a hidden world of over 1,000 species of bees in Arizona, and watching your step in 'Rattlesnake Country' are just some of the thrills that await viewers who answer the call of 'Wild National Parks!'

For more details about Scenic National Parks: Yosemite on Blu-ray, see the Scenic National Parks: Yosemite Blu-ray Review

Scenic National Parks: Yosemite Blu-ray, Video Quality

 


Yosemite is presented in an interlaced VC-1 encoding, which averages about 25 Mbps. Much of the material is newly filmed in high definition and looks splendid in long shots and closeups alike. Blacks are rich and satisfactory, and whites look superb. Colors in the landscape shots and sequences are reproduced well and display often vivid tones, but like the other two titles in Questar's Scenic National Parks Blu-ray series, the flesh tones on humans are far out of whack, and often give them a "Cheeto" orange color. Other times red push is clearly apparent, with interviewees looking like they have a bad case of rosacea. Artifacts like macroblocking and pixelation were not apparent, and contrast is excellent, revealing every fissure in the faces of so much stone. Aside from the distracting flaw of red or orange flesh tones, Yosemite and its bonus feature look quite nice on this release.

Scenic National Parks: Yosemite Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 


Coming equipped with a basic selection of Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1, Yosemite has a surprisingly dynamic soundscape. As much as it can have with a compressed track, admittedly, but the audio seems well-balanced and put to adequate use. The narration remains squarely in the center channel, and the fronts mostly emit musical score. The rears pick up a fair bit of ambiance, and the LFE can even be heard at times with the roar of the falls or even low points of the score. It is at times unfortunate and frustrating that the feature comes without subtitles, because so many locale names are cited that it's difficult, once in a while, to pick up what was said by the narrator or an onscreen individual. Still, for what it is, Yosemite's audio is adequate and serves a straightforward purpose of informing the viewer.