When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray

Discovery Channel | 2007 | 258 mins | Not rated | Sep 30, 2008

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Video Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video resolution: 1080i Aspect ratio: 1.78:1 Audio English: Dolby Digital 5.1 English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (less) Subtitles English SDH, Spanish English SDH, Spanish (less) Discs 25GB Blu-ray Disc Four-disc set

Price List price: $69.98  Amazon: $28.99 (Save 59%) Third party: $26.58 (Save 62%) Usually ships in 24 hours Blu-ray rating Users 4.7 Reviewer 4.0 Overall 4.1 Based on 9 user ratings Playback Region free

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

When I first cracked open When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions and slid its first disc into my Blu-ray player, I wasn't expecting to be impressed with the series' 1080i/AVC-encoded video transfer. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the episodes looked significantly better than many television documentaries available in high definition, especially considering the amount of decades-old footage and newsreel bits the Discovery Channel scraped together to tell NASA's story. It helps that the modern-day interviews populating each episode feature lifelike colors and skintones, crisp textures, sharp edges, and deep shadows. While the remastered archive footage can't possibly compete with the series' most recent material, it still looks great in its own right. Sure, print damage, foreground softness, and contrast wavering continually assault the classic clips, but the Discovery Channel clearly went to a tremendous amount of trouble to restore and rejuvenate the tattered prints.

As far as the proficiency of its transfer is concerned, I did notice some artifacting, digital noise, edge enhancement, and a bit of minor black crush here and there (particularly when it came to shots of space). However, even when several issues simultaneously appeared on the screen, they were never glaring enough to yank me out of the experience. Ultimately, When We Left Earth's transfer isn't as eye-gougingly gorgeous or technically consistent as other notable documentary series like Planet Earth, but it's nevertheless a relatively strong release that easily trounces its standard DVD counterpart.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray, Audio Quality

I was also pleased with the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track featured on the Blu-ray edition of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions -- in fact, it's a more competent and rousing mix than I initially thought I'd be reviewing. Interviews sound clean and well balanced, recent launch footage injects some welcome LFE heft into the audio presentation, and Gary Sinise's smooth narration is crystal clear and nicely prioritized (even when the series' abruptly hops from one historical era to the next). More importantly, the archive footage audio has been meticulously restored. Quality still varies wildly from shot to shot depending on the age and condition of the source materials -- warbled speech, intrusive hissing, and audible popping are frequent issues -- but documentary junkies will quickly ignore such common and inevitable flaws. Likewise, rear speaker support is often non-existent, but audiophiles should attribute any soundfield inadequacies to the nature of the episodes rather than the design of the track.

My only lingering gripe is that the Discovery Channel should have upgraded the sonic prowess of the presentation with TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio. I can't be sure a lossless track would have delivered any perceptible differences, but I suspect the series' dynamics would have been more resonant and the fidelity of the archive footage more precise. In the end, When We Left Earth isn't going to wake the neighbors or send you searching for the latest and greatest home audio equipment, but it does manage to hold its own against other television series and feature documentaries.

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