Rating: 
Summary: Big stories Bad animation
Review: Dinosaur Planet is a 3 hour 20 minute documentary broken into four fifty minute parts. Each part examines a different dinosaur. A veiocoraptor looking for a pack, a pyotoraptor traped on an island of dwarfs, a saltasaur trying to nest, and a young t-rex ancester hunting for maisaurs. The good these take the stories of several never before animated dinosaurs and like Walking with Dinosaurs makes theroys about them to make a nature documentary style film. The raptors are feathered (like they should be) and there behavior is mostly accurate to how one would expect dinosaurs to act. Unfortunitly this series have some severe flaws. First of all the animation is terrible. I mean terrible. I find it quite amazing Walking with Dinosaurs a series made 4 years eariler can have such superior animation. This series is no better then When Dinosaurs Roamed America. The dinosaurs also have bad interactiveablity to there environment. Dinosaurs often make no tracks. This series is clearly cheap and lacking the care of Walking with Dinosaurs. The narration is just as bad as the animation. Lets face it the guy they got to do the naration just doesn't have the clear power in his voice as Kenneth Barenth. His voice and bad animation will probably drive everyone but the most hard core dinosaur fan away. Still there is some enjoyment to be found so you might want to give it a look if you love dinosaurs.
Rating:
Summary: Fun to Watch Dinos
Review: Dinosaur Planet is fun to watch especially if you have kids. The dinosaurs CGI looked good and the sound effects of their roars were well done. I also enjoyed the different stories it told with each dinosaur. I watched all episodes straight through in the Discovery Channel. It does have it's faults. The CGI looked good but didn't animate well. The dinosaurs just seemed to have unatural looking motions when walking, running or eating. The most annoying thing in the whole series was the narrator's voice; Christian Slater. Although I respect Christian Slater as an actor, he is a horrible narrator. His voice doesn't match along with the story telling of the series and since he has a bit of slang when he talks, it just sounds moronic. Walking With Dinosaurs is still the best documentry out there, but Dinosaur Planet is still fun to watch and kids will like it as well.
Rating:
Summary: Another fine documentary on dinosaurs
Review: First of all, I would like to point out that this documentary is made by Meteor Studios in Montreal (When Dinosaurs roamed America) and not by Framestore in UK (Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beast, Allosaurus and Chased by Dinosaurs).I love dinosaurs so I have watched the whole series from Discovery Channel. I was disappointed at first because the animation and the compositing are far from perfect. I don't know what happened to Meteor Studios but the result is even worse then their last documentary on dinosaurs (When Dinosaurs Roamed America). The animation is terrible and the compositing is even less convincing this time. You simply cannot compare this documentary in a technical point of view with Walking with Dinosaurs, a documentary that was made 4 years ago. Even my girlfriend saw the difference in quality. She doesn't usually notice that. Because this is a visual documentary, I think it's important that the CGI has to be good. It's not that all bad. The stories were interesting enough and I was happy to learn things on new dinosaurs. The dinosaurs (textures and models) look really impressive in still pictures. Overall, I was happy to see another documentary on dinosaurs and I will buy this DVD when it comes out because I love everything related to dinosaurs. If you are only a casual viewer and looking for the ultimate DVD on dinosaurs, I will definitely recommend "Walking with Dinosaurs" instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but no Walking with Dinosaurs
Review: Firstly, this series isn't animated by Framestore - the same folks who did Walking with Dinosaurs, it's made by Meteor Studios, who made 'When Dinosaurs Roamed America' this should be pretty evident from the quality of the animation, which whilst at times not bad, is certainly considerably below the efforts of Framestore and the BBC, and this is 4 years on from 'Walking with'... (Check out the lastest 'Chased by Dinosaurs' episodes from the BBC to see just how far Framestore have come since WWD - Spectacular, albiet with annoying talking heads now in the form of Nigel Marvin) When Dinosarus Roamed America was quite a bad series, but this is a big improvement. Most of the Dinos are very well textured and built, the problem, is the animation, sadly animation is the most critical factor in conveying realism, the human eye only needs a little bit of visual movement information to believe something is real, but that movement has to be spot on, so whilst these textures are first rate the movement ruins their impact. All the same, a big improvement on When Dinosaurs Roamed. I wasn't particularly keen on the fur on the Raptors, but nevermind. One small nitpick, lots of scenes with grass - there was no grass back then, these locations can be found, just look at what the Walking With Dinosaurs crew did. But hey, there aren't exactly a lot of these types of series on the market apart from Walking with Dinosaurs, so I'm glad they made it all the same, and I hope they make more, because they are improving. I'm sure the budget here was smaller, and it's comendable that they severly curtailed the 'talking heads' and stayed with the action. The stories are generally quite interesting (especially Pod's Journey), Christian Slater sounds pretty nasal but he's bearable. All up 3 out of 5. Check it out in High-Definition if you get the chance. I hope the next effort is on par with the BBC's efforts!
Rating: 
Summary: It's not *that& bad
Review: Granted I'm fascinated with dinosaurs, but I thought the series was fairly good. I liked the animation, I liked the characters and the backdrops weren't bad. There were some glaring flaws, such as predators who advertise their presence almost contstantly and tiny, noisy squeeky babies (surrounded by much larger and hungrier adults). Just keep in mind this was created for the braindead masses and the "extras" were added to make it more interesting and the series was fairly good. I particurlarly liked pod and the teeny, parrot colored dromeosaurids.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but WWD has far better animation
Review: I am now an expert in dinosaur films and film-making, thanks to my son's undying interest in the prehistoric creatures. We have this, and we have the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs (WWD) series. Both are TREMENDOUS EDUCATIONAL AND CINEMATIC ACHIEVEMENTS. But I do think WWD is better than this, which is why this only gets 4 stars. (If aliens from another planet saw WWD, they'd think it was real; hence, it gets 5 stars for its realism.) PROS
* The storylines are more "personal" than those in WWD: the dinosaurs have names and the stories make us more sympathetic to their plights * I really like the cut-ins of the paleontologist explaining the evidence they found related to the storyline, the questions that still exist, etc. * Each story is longer than the stories in WWD, which gives us more time to know the characters CONS
* THE ANIMATIONS ARE *YEARS* BEHIND THE QUALITY OF THE ANIMATIONS IN WWD; the rendering of the dinosaur movement is choppy; they just don't look as real the landscape they inhabit; they don't leave footprints in sandy soil; etc. * Some of the stories actually use landscapes with grass and even flowering grass, neither of which existed until after the age of the dinosaurs * Christian Slater is not Kenneth Branagh (who narrates WWD) PURCHASING RECOMMENDATION
Buy WWD first. The quality of the production far outweighs any advantages Dinosaur Planet might have. But don't hesitate to buy this. It's good. And honestly, 10 years ago, we'd have all watched this and raved about how great it was. We are spoiled by technology...
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but WWD has far better animation
Review: I knock this one star because the animation isn't nearly as good as the animation in Walking With Dinosaurs (WWD) from the BBC. We certainly are spoiled by good animation these days. From WWD to Gollum in the Rings movies, our expectations have been set very high. WWD is so good that it looks like cameras were stuck in the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. The animation here, made 4 years later, isn't nearly as good. PROS
* Animation is good enough for kids, and I suppose that's the primary audience
* Character-driven plot-lines seem to be more captivating for my young son
* Cut aways to paleontologist describing the fossil findings around which each of the stories are created are fascinating CONS
* Animation quality: Hey, at least have the dinosaurs leave footprints!
* There was no grass during the age of the dinosaurs, yet lots of grass exists in these episodes
* Some people won't like Christian Slater's slang-filled narration; it is a sharp contrast with the very proper narration from Kenneth Branagh in WWD PURCHASING RECOMMENDATION
Really, the biggest knock against this is animation quality, and that's just not an issue for young kids. SO, BUY THIS! BUT BUY WWD FIRST! WARNING: There are some graphic scenes of carnage. These might disturb young viewers (though they haven't bothered my 5 year old), so parents should screen the episodes first if you are concerned.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Stories
Review: I think Dinosaur Planet is a great DVD. I don't agree with some of the criticisms that other viewers have written. I like Slater as the narrator and I like the animation. Probably the strongest aspect of these stories is the study of the animals as intelligent creatures that have feelings and personalities. You get the feeling that you know these animals in the same way that you might know the neighbor's dog. I would say the stories are consistent with current theories about how dinosaurs behaved. This is enforced with segments that show a real paleontologist talking about fossils and other things. Jeff Marzano
Rating:
Summary: Great Stories
Review: I think Dinosaur Planet is a great DVD. I don't agree with some of the criticisms that other viewers have written. I like Slater as the narrator and I like the animation. Probably the strongest aspect of these stories is the study of the animals as intelligent creatures that have feelings and personalities. You get the feeling that you know these animals in the same way that you might know the neighbor's dog. I would say the stories are consistent with current theories about how dinosaurs behaved. This is enforced with segments that show a real paleontologist talking about fossils and other things. Jeff Marzano
Rating:
Summary: Dinosaur Planet
Review: My five year old has had a long running fascination with dinosaurs and we own several of the Discovery Channel films about them. Walking With Dinosaurs is great (I totally recommend it) but more 'heavy' (there's no story line really). Dinosaur Planet is lighter- there's a story and characters, yet it's not like a cutesy cartoon. It also has some new dinosaurs not featured on WWD, for example we've learned a lot about raptors from this movie. My son really loves it, he runs around for hours pretending to be White Tip and Pod. I would say for the child who really loves dinosaurs this is a fun DVD and for the used price WELL worth it.
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