The fact that they replaced the legendary Sir David Attenborough's narration with boring "oops, you missed a spot!" pap from Sigourney Weaver is nigh unforgiveable. The fact that the DVD series will ALSO feature her narration seals the deal.

Why don't you take your gas-guzzling HDTV back to the lot! We are trying to save a planet up in here!!!

um.. nick... aren't most hdtv's non-tube tv's, hence better for the environment?

What the hell are they paying you guys over there at the Stranger?

I saw "Planet Earth". Thought it was great, but thank you for pointing out my hero, Sir David Attenborough. His story-telling is 5 billion times better. Of course, his aim is to uncover the specifics of animal behavior, rather than do sweeping pictorals, although his photography is killer, too. (I'm guessing the same photographers do both. Who else has that kind of super-patience?)

After watching Planet Earth, I figured out at the script is really meant just to tie the unbelievable photography together, not to give in-depth information. After that, I stopped bitching and just enjoyed watching the snow leopards.

Not to worry, Nick, I'm as sensitive to environmental concerns as the next guy--this TV runs on babies. I also paid for it with babies, not Stranger loot. All my Stranger loot went for gum (and some babies).

It's not like HDTVs are that expensive these days, and yeah the LCDs are better than big cathode ray tubes.

If you don't like the narration, just put it on mute. I was able to identify pretty much all the animals, vampire squid and all, without any help.

And it looks pretty good in SD, too, even the grainy SD version of Discovery my TV somehow picks up even though I don't pay for cable.

I watched the entirety of Planet Earth when it aired on the BBC over here, and it was most definitely narrated by Attenborough, not Sigourney Weaver. What the hell? And the entire thing was amazing. Don't miss it.

The narration isn't the problem, it's the script. She has a nice voice.

It's really not worth it without David Attenborough. I recommend downloading the series from the internets instead. You miss out on the HDTV, but the British version is much more watchable.

You're right, Anthony. Planet Earth is awesome, even in my resin-like pixelation quality. If you'd just fatten up the babies' brains on this stuff before you spend 'em, they'd be worth more.

ya seen all of them on CBC in Canada already. I guess they did not think Sir David Attenborough was good enough.

We're still trying to scrape together enough for our birth control now that those bastards have raised the prices.

You should change that to. If you have an HDTV, and CABLE. If you have HDTV and receive your signals over the air, you're still out of luck.

Good thing there's BitTorrent.

This show is excellent, no matter if you have HDTV or not. Why go all elitist in the post and make it out that having HDTV makes the show? Nonsense, you prick.

Yeah, I posted a comment about this show on Dan Savage's "pet possum" post (ie, "speaking of weird animals..."), but got no response. In HDTV, my wife and I kept saying "wow!" to all the images - the blue bird of paradise doing his jig, the snow leopard in pakistan taking down prey, the cranes trying to fly over Everest, the strange creatures 2 miles deep. Simply put, it's sumptuous eye candy. An interesting show in standard def, I imagine, but jaw-dropping in high def.

Attenboroughs narration is included in the DVD.

Thank GOD. Rumor has it he did a much less goober script than Weaver did. I found her narration and/or the script used in US version smarmy - to - horrifying.