National Geographic's Surviving Everest: The Collector's Edition

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and misleading
Review: The DVD quality is poor. It feels like an old VHS tape. Most disappointing, considering this is from National Geographic! Collector's Edition my foot.

The title is misleading. This dvd has nothing to do with Everest. It mostly discusses Hillary's social endeavors in Khumbu region-- which is nice, but not what I purchased it for. If you want to see anything about surviving Everest, watch the Nova series: "Everest: The death zone".

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing - Not really about Everest Climb
Review: This DVD was, frankly, a disappointment. Very little of it is about Mt. Everest or Sir Edmund Hillary's climb. A better description of the main feature would be "What Sir Edmund Hillary did AFTER he climbed Everest". It is about the culture of the people who lived around the base of the mountain, and how Sir Edmund has helped them by building schools and teaching them about conservation. VERY LITTLE of the main feature is about his climb of the mountain.

There is an extra featurette called "Surviving Everest: First hand accounts" where individuals who have climbed Mt. Everest talk about their experiences and there is a fair amount of footage on the mountain. However, the quality of this footage is not as good as I had hoped. If you want to see major mountain climbing footage, look elsewhere. The IMAX DVD has gotten mixed reviews, so I don't know what to recommend. You may want to wait for "The Conquest of Everest" the movie made of Sir Edmund Hillary's first ever climb of Everest. I have never seen this, but it must have more climbing footage than this DVD did.

One other bone to pick, the main feature and the "extra" interview with Sir Edmund specifically mention that he had a cameraman with him and they got some amazing pictures on his first climb - BUT, these were sadly left out of the too-small "Photo Gallery".

So far, the other two National Geographic DVDs I have are pretty good: Battle for Midway (incredible battle footage) and Secrets Of The Titanic.