The much lauded BBC documentary series Planet Earth received the Special Edition this month with a new October 4th Blu-ray release from BBC Home Video.

The original Planet Earth was a huge seller on Blu-ray early on and was often used as the gauge for position in the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD.

This new release for the series includes new high bitrate AVC video encoding and DTS-HD High Resolution audio, along with a huge range of supplements.

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June 7th, 2011 marked the arrival of the BBC Home Video release of the documentary film American: The Bill Hicks Story.

Bill Hicks to me is a comedian’s comedian, and no doubt the led the way for a number of ‘angry’ comedians.

Hicks was always way more popular in the UK than in his home country, and I guess it is no surprise that it was left to the British to make a documentary about the comedian’s life.

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Amazon has a bunch of box sets on sale this week, including Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season, True Blood: The Complete Second Season, The Pacific and The Ultimate Matrix Collection.

Top seller today is the HBO box set The Pacific – only $38.99 right now – saving 61%.

You can also get a great deal on Band of Brothers at only $36.49.

True Blood: The Complete Second Season is on sale for $28.99, saving 64%.

Save 55% off Deadwood: The Complete Series, currently listed for only $93.99.

The ever popular Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series is currently listed for only $34.99.

Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season is a great deal right now for only $13.99, saving 65%.

The Ultimate Matrix Collection is also still a nice deal at only $44.99.

Top deals at Amazon right now include Toy Story, Shrek Forever After, Gran Torino, Watchmen and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

Toy Story is an excellent deal for only $11.99, 70% off.

Avatar is also a great deal at only $23.99, saving 56%.

The Blu-ray DVD Combo for The Princess Bride is selling well at $8.99, while new release Shrek Forever After is only $17.99, both saving 64%.

Get a great deal on Mummy Trilogy – only $25.99 right now – less than $9 per movie.

Save 65% off the ever popular Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series, currently listed for only $34.99.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is under $7, and a deal I had to snap up was District 9 at $8.99.

Gran Torino is also priced at $8.99, as is Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and The Patriot.

Get them while they last, and follow our Twitter Feed a different bargain every hour.

Amazon has a few nice Blu-ray Box Set bargains this week, including the Box Set of the week, Firefly: The Complete Series saving 72% at only $25.

Long time favourite Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series is a great deal right now for only $35.99, saving 64%.

The Fox show Dollhouse: Season One is currently 57% off at only $29.99.

Also from the BBC you can get and Robin Hood: Season One for $33.99.

Heroes fans can pick up Heroes: Season 1 and Heroes: Season 3 for $27.49 as well as Heroes: Season 2 for $23.49.

The BBC show Being Human is back for Being Human: Season Two, released by BBC Home Video on September 21st, 2010.

While Season One focused on the vampire leader intent on taking the world from the humans, in Season Two the threats come from the humans themselves.

A defrocked Catholic priest named Kemp has been on the warpath against evil after his family was devastated by vampires almost 40 years ago.

Kemp has teamed up with religious minded scientists to study the supernatural creatures and Mitchell, Annie and George have got their attention.

While the CenSSA is focused on finding a cure for the werewolf, they also take any opportunity to kill off vampires they find.

Meanwhile Annie, George and Mitchell all strive to fit better in human society, with Annie getting a job, George finding a new human girlfriend and Mitchell leading the vampires to stop drinking human blood.

Things go somewhat awry though as Kemp and Co. try to bring George to the facility to receive the cure while helping Annie to ‘cross over’ and attacking the vampire headquarters.

While the body count is higher and the monster and gore effects go well beyond Season One, the show still largely remains a supernatural drama that is all about the character development.

Perhaps the theme for Season Two is the contrast of our main characters that are inherently evil versus the humans who hunt them – who are the real monsters?

Season Two is a strong followup to Season One, and again sets the stage for a new season to follow.

I think it is essential to watch this show off disc in the US, since the content of this BBC television show won’t cut it with the television censors in the USA, even on cable.

Lenora Crichlow, Russell Tovey and Aidan Turner return to reprise their characters in the second season of the show.

Being Human: Season Two was created by British actor, comedian and writer Toby Whithouse, who has also written for shows like No Angels and Dr Who.

The show is currently fairly popular, with an IMDb score of 8.2/10.

The season features a VC-1 1080i encode at roughly 31 Mbps, and is presented at 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling the HDTV screen.

While the show is shot on HD equipment, there are a lot of night shots and the image quality does vary throughout accordingly

Check out the details page for Being Human: Season Two to see full resolution PNG screen captures from the season.

Sadly the main audio is simple 2 two channel Dolby Digital encoded at 448 kbps.

The eight episodes span thee dual layer BD50 discs that are coded for All Regions.

The first disc features a pair of Easter Eggs which you access by letting the menu run with no input until it goes to a special screen.

Both of these featurettes are behind the scenes sequences for the CenSSA – the Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity.

The main featurette is The CenSSA Story, a set of mock video blog entries that cover the events of the second season from the perspective Lloyd, of one of the CenSSA scientists who has a minor role in the TV show.

You can also see the video clips at the website at http://www.censsa.co.uk/

Lloyd also leads the audience on a short Guided Tour of the Facility.

Disc two features a number of extras that are not hidden, including the Blood Bursting featurette which goes behind the scenes at the CenSSA lab where they initially test the compression chamber technique to prevent the werewolf transformation with horrific consequences.

The cave location used for the vampire execution sequences is covered in The Caves featurette.

The Unleashing the Beast featurette discusses the ultra-violent side effects of George’s plan to suppress the werewolf with sedatives.

The episode that features Herrick and Mitchell’s back story flashback in the 1960′s is the focus of The Swinging Sixties featurette, covering the set design, costumes and props used to recreate the era.

Behind the Makeup follows the makeup team as they assemble the amazing prosthetics and practical make up used to create a lot of the visual mayhem of the show, especially the blood and gore effects.

The changes and improvements made to the werewolf transformation process and the transformed werewolf are covered in the Making the New Werewolf featurette.

Lastly the The Carnage featurette covers the sequence where Mitchell and Daisy go wild and kill a train load of people to take revenge on the humans.

Being Human: Season Two was a fairly solid follow up to the first season with plenty of drama and plot twists and turns.

The Blu-ray release from BBC Home Video has pretty strong video and a good range of extras, but the Dolby Digital stereo audio is somewhat weak by today’s standards.

All in all though it is a great show and in my opinion worth getting in high definition.

The retail price is $59.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $42.99, saving 28%!

Extras:

• The CenSSA Story
• Guided Tour of the Facility
• Blood Bursting
• Unleashing the Beast
• The Caves
• The Swinging Sixties
• Behind the Makeup
• Making the New Werewolf
• The Carnage

Synopsis:

It’s tough being supernatural. Mitchell’s (Aidan Turner), romance with a feisty doctor is disrupted by a vampire community in disarray. George’s (Russell Tovey) relationship with a new girlfriend is undermined by an uncontrollable twist in his werewolf existence and Annie (Lenora Crichlow) has a brutal reminder that life as a spirit is full of challenges. All three are threatened by CenSSA, a religious organization committed to the destruction or conversion of supernatural freaks. Just when your inner demons might be conquered, it’s the outer demons that won’ t go away.

Blu-ray fans received a fresh dose of British television with the BBC Home Video Blu-ray Disc release Being Human: Season One on July 20th, 2010.

This show was popular in the UK and is very much in a similar vein to Torchwood.

While it is partly promoted as witty and occasionally is, this show is far from a comedy, rather more being a stylistic thriller.

As with many BBC shows, the season runs six full one hour episodes.

Being Human is based on an intriguing premise, with a vampire and a werewolf living in a house along with the ghost a woman that died in the house.

While the members of the house are cursed, supernatural creatures, they want nothing more than to be normal and fit in with the civilized world.

Each of the characters is different in nature and handles their affliction in a different way.

George the werewolf is a very sensitive, intelligent and neurotic fellow who now faces the monthly curse of his transformation.

The vampire is Mitchell, who is now 120 years old and has decided to shun the killing and feeding lifestyle and is trying to refrain from drinking human blood.

Annie the ghost unhappily died before her wedding and is still madly in love with her fiance, who has now moved on, though still visits the house in the role of landlord.

For the most part, the episodes cover the trials of each of the characters, often with a focus one particular character.

There is also a season length story arc with the vampires secretly planning to take over the Earth from the humans.

While the show starts off a little slow for my liking, I found after a couple of episodes I was hooked and had to watch the story play out to its conclusion, which also sets up the premise for the second season which will be released later this year.

Overall I found this series to be entertaining and well worth a look, especially for fans of Torchwood and Doctor Who.

The cast features Russell Tovey, Lenora Crichlow and Aidan Turner in the lead roles, and also includes Sinead Keenan and Jason Watkins in key supporting roles.

Being Human: Season One was created by Toby Whitehouse, who has written for Doctor Who and Torchwood.

The series has a very respectable IMDb score of 8.3/10.

The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080i encode at 30 Mbps, and is presented at 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling the HDTV screen.

This high bitrate encode does a pretty good job of presenting this show which is often dark and occasionally ‘noisy’.

See the details page for Being Human: Season One for full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc.

The main audio is presented in Dolby Digital with 2.0 channels, encoded at 448 kbps.

With many BBC titles featuring DTS-HD audio, it was a bit disappointing to see lossy Dolby Digital used here.

The discs are dual layer BD50, with around 43 GB used and are coded for All Regions.

This release comes with quite a range of supplemental features including a lot of cast and crew interviews.

Additional footage is presented in the form of deleted, extended and alternate scenes.

The Character Profiles featurette runs 20 minutes and covers not only the three main characters but also a number of the key supporting characters.

The nature of the vampire is covered in Vamping it Up, which goes into the vampire ‘rules’ that the show incorporates, as well as some traditional traits that they chose to ignore.

Toby Whitehouse on the Journey has the show creator looking into the history of the show and the direction it took – be sure to not watch this before watching the actual show – many spoilers contained!

The technicalities and techniques of the werewolf transformation that George goes through a number of times in Season One is covered in Becoming a Werewolf.

The Stunts Package studies a couple of the major  stunt sequences that appear in the show, one with Annie falling down the stairs and a second that involves a vehicle striking a couple of pedestrians.

The Video Diaries run almost 15 minutes and features a lot of behind the scenes footage and footage of the actors discussing the process as they shoot the production, all shot by the three main actors.

Our Journey’s End is certainly another supplement that you will want to hold off on until you have seen the complete series as this talks about the set up for Season 2.

Additional featurettes cover the show’s locations, sets, costumes and make up.

Being Human: Season One is a pretty strong TV series produced by the BBC in the supernatural thriller genre.

The Blu-ray release is for the most part a strong title from BBC Home Video, with the only down side being the stereo Dolby Digital sound track.

The retail price is $39.98, or order it right now at Amazon for $28.49, saving 29%!

Extras:

• Alternate Scenes
• Character Profiles
• Vamping it Up
• Toby Whitehouse on the Journey
• Locations
• Costumes and Make Up
• Deleted Scenes
• Extended Scenes
• Stunts package
• Video Diaries
• Our Journey’s End
• Becoming a Werewolf

Synopsis:

What’s a vampire to do if he wants to live a normal life? In the first hit season of this “engaging, dark and wickedly funny” (SciFi Wire) BBC series, Mitchell swears off blood and shares a house with George-a reluctant werewolf equally committed to escaping the dark side. As luck would have it, though, the house is already occupied by Annie, an insecure ghost. Enjoy the trio’s unconventional friendships and supernatural adventures, starring Aidan Turner (Desperate Romantics) and Russell Tovey (Little Dorrit).

How the Earth Changed History is a new key documentary series Blu-ray title released by BBC Home Video on June 29th, 2010.

Produced by the creators of Earth: The Biography, this BBC television documentary series studies how the planet’s natural forces have shaped the evolution of human society.

There are four main episodes in the series, which loosely follow the four classical elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

The first episode covers the effects of water on human history.

It is not hard to imagine how water shaped the growth of civilizations planet wide, with early humans tending to start communities in the vicinity of abundant water sources like lakes and rivers.

Additionally civilizations who became capable of harnessing the water for irrigation and storage have been successful, and conflicts over the rights to water continue even to this day.

The second episode focuses on the deep earth.

This episode covers both the effects of the  minerals of the deep earth, as well as the negative effects of deep earth movement in the form of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Interestingly enough, both the abundance of minerals and the occurrence of earthquakes are associated with the fault lines along the borders of the tectonic plates.

For example, California has received great benefit from the fault lines like the San Andreas fault, as well as having occasionally suffering from major earthquakes.

Wind is the topic for the third episode, where we learn how the planet’s prevailing wind patterns changed the way humans traveled the globe after Columbus’ discovery of the Atlantic trade winds.

With ships following the winds on the trade routes where ‘globalization’ effectively began.

The wind has also affected the climate all around the world, creating opportunities for some regions to cultivate farming and subsequent wealth in historic civilizations.

Of course interactions between wind and the ocean has caused numerous natural disasters over the years.

The final episode of the series covers the topic of Fire.

While fire is of great danger to humans, the harnessing of fire has led to many innovations that have aided in the development of civilization and it is something that we use every day in a variety of ways to provide heat or energy.

Fire is a relatively recent element, with the conditions needed for fire only met when plant life had raised the oxygen level to that needed for fire to exist.

Tracing the use of fire and the effects on history is actually more akin to tracing the choices of fuel, starting with simple wood, through charcoal to coal and other fossil fuels.

Along with the development of new fuels came novel ways to use the fuel to create motive force from fire.

There is an additional episode in the series called Human Planet, which looks at the effects that humans have had in turn on the planet in recent history.

With human influence reaching even the furthest corners of the planet, this episode looks at impact on the planet that humans have and what effects this might have on the future of the human race.

This television series is entertaining in that it presents many sites on earth that you will probably have never seen before, each with an interesting story that ties into the theme of the episode.

Quite a number of the segments feature some pretty extreme efforts to access, including caving, paragliding, diving and filming at intense temperatures.

Another of the intriguing aspects of the series for me was the revelation of many ancient cultures that came and went due to the natural forces on the planet, and the ruins that remain from these civilizations.

In some ways I wonder how long current western culture has before vast natural forces cause a major upheaval and change life as we know it.

The series is presented in person by Professor Iain Stewart, which for me makes a fresh change from the typical narration.

This series was well worth checking out and I found it to be more educational than some of the ‘eye candy’ documentaries released in recent years, though it is also quite visually stimulating as well.

The series has had a good response from viewers, with an IMDb score of 8/10.

The video on the disc is an AVC 1080i encode at 19.5 Mbps, and is presented at 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling the HDTV screen.

The video is all shot on HD cameras, and while quality is generally decent. it does vary and compression artifacts are occasionally present.

You will find full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc at the details page for How the Earth Changed History.

The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels – 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

It is nice to see lossless audio used for this release – somewhat of a departure from Warner’s other television releases.

The series is presented on two discs – the first is a dual layer BD50, with 33.5 GB used and the second a close to full BD25 – the discs are coded for All Regions.

The extras are on the second disc and under the title Filming In Extremes.

This supplement is a selection of interviews with presenter Iain Stewart where he discusses the challenges of shooting certain segments for the series, intercut with occasional behind the scenes footage.

These interviews provide interesting insight in to the lengths they went to in order to get the shots they wanted – it would have been nice if there were some more similar segments or other extras included though.

How the Earth Changed History is a worthwhile documentary series that I can recommend.

The BBC Home Video Blu-ray release does have a few visual artifacts and is a little light on extras, though my overall feeling is that it is still well worth a look.

The retail price is $34.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $29.49, saving 16%!

Extras:

• Filming In Extremes – An Interview With Iain Stewart

Synopsis:

From the creators of Earth: The Biography comes this powerful story of the natural forces of geology, geography and climate that shaped mankind as we know it. Passionate storytelling and extraordinary high-definition footage offer an original version of human history and a new perspective on who we are today.

The Blu-ray market share was a fairly typical 12% on a revenue of $15.03M for the week ending June 27th, according to Home Media Magazine.

The Book of Eli from Warner maintained its place at the top of the chart, fending off Universal’s Green Zone, close behind in 2nd place.

Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story and Toy Story 2 took 3rd and 4th place respectively, ahead of Avatar from Fox in 5th place.

New release She’s Out of My League from Paramount came in 7th place, with new HBO release Entourage: The Complete Sixth Season very close behind in 8th position, and Summit’s new release Remember Me settled for 11th place.

The top sellers for this week had a pretty solid market share for Blu-ray Disc, with The Book of Eli selling 31% on Blu-ray Disc and Green Zone selling 29%.

On the other end of the spectrum though, Remember Me from Summit sold only 10% on Blu-ray Disc.

Avatar continues to be a strong seller with 42% Blu-ray Disc market share, which was equaled this week by the BBC’s TV series Life.

New releases Entourage and She’s Out of My League sold 20 – 21% on Blu-ray Disc.

It is kind of interesting that while on a release by release basis, Blu-ray is probably on average in the 20% market share range, the overall market share is much lower.

This indicates that the huge depth of the DVD catalog is going to be tough for Blu-ray to gain on.

The Blu-ray market share was 14% for the second week running for the week ending June 20th, according to Home Media Magazine.

On the plus side the revenue was a healthier $26.44M, up 27% over the same period last year.

Warner’s new release The Book of Eli took first place on the chart this week, ahead of Avatar from Fox which has pushed Disney’s Alice in Wonderland to 3rd position.

Shutter Island from Paramount and Sony’s 2012 round out the top 5, with recent Lionsgate release From Paris with Love having to settle for 6th place.

New release When in Rome from Disney debuted in 13th place on the chart, ahead of Sony’s new title Youth in Revolt in 17th position.

Looking at per title market share, top seller The Book of Eli was a strong player for Blu-ray with 35% market share, doing slightly better than Alice in Wonderland with 33% market share.

Avatar continues its strong run with 46% of sales on Blu-ray Disc, as does Life from BBC Video with 39% Blu-ray market share.

Discounts played a strong role this week with 2012 taking the top honors with 79% of sales on Blu-ray Disc, ahead of Law Abiding Citizen with 51% and of The Hangover with 48%.

New release When in Rome is at the other end of the scale with only 12% market share on Blu-ray Disc, while Youth in Revolt did better with 25% of sales on Blu-ray Disc.